Justice and Law within the Horizon of the Rule-of-Law State: General Theoretical Foundations and Value Orientations

The article examines the general theoretical foundations of the relationship between justice and law within the framework of the rule-of-law state and clarifies the role of justice as a value-based criterion of the quality of legal regulation. Justice is analyzed not as an external moral aspiration, but as a legally relevant measure of proportionality and equal human dignity of participants in legal relations, shaping the substance of legal norms, the legitimacy of public authority, and trust in legal institutions. Particular attention is paid to legal certainty and procedural guarantees as practical manifestations of justice under contemporary conditions of increasingly complex regulation and cross-border interactions, where coherence between legal orders and predictability of legal consequences become especially significant. The article concludes that, within the horizon of the rule-of-law state, justice functions as a core normative foundation of the legal order and as a guiding standard for restraining arbitrariness in both public and private spheres.