Article 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation: legality of its application

The subject of this study is not so much the provisions themselves formulated in Article 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, as the level of awareness about them among ordinary (in simpler words, "ordinary") citizens of our country; as well as the degree to which they correctly understand the above norms. The relevance of studying the issue is confirmed, for example, by the increasing number of publications and videos on the Internet devoted to this topic. And despite the fact that a significant part of such materials are explicitly or covertly advertising the services of lawyers, a significant number of various kinds of comments expressing all kinds of points of view, up to diametrically opposed, clearly indicate the existence of controversial issues that require study and reflection. As a methodological basis, the research will use both general scientific (observation, analysis, generalization, analogy, etc.) and private scientific (sociological, formal legal, comparative legal methods, method of analysis and interpretation of normative legal acts) methods of cognition. As part of the work, based on a specially designed questionnaire, the number of citizens who are familiar with the theses specified in Article 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation was revealed as a percentage of the total number of respondents who are not directly related to the field of jurisprudence, as well as to establish the correspondence of the truth of their personal interpretation of these provisions with real requirements. The next step is to analyze the possible origin of the above interpretation by tracking information sources in the mass media (television, information and telecommunication network Internet, etc.) that affect this topic in one way or another. The novelty is caused by the lack of such studies, and the practical significance is due to the need for officials who verify reports of a crime and conduct a preliminary investigation to understand that the understanding of the provisions prescribed in the article in question may often not coincide with generally accepted; and this, in turn, imposes additional ethical obligations on these persons.