ENSURING THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF NORMATIVE ACTS AS A FUNCTION OF THE REGULATIONS OF THE VERKHOVNA RADA OF UKRAINE: SOME THEORETICAL, LEGAL AND APPLIED ASPECTS

The subject of the study is a theoretical and legal analysis of the functional orientation of the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (hereinafter – the Rules) in the area of ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts. The research methodology is based on a combination of general scientific and special scientific methods selected with due regard for the purpose and subject matter of the study. The dialectical method was used to study the existing trends in scientific cognition of the role of the Rules of Procedure in parliamentary procedures. The methods of analysis and synthesis ensured the identification of regulatory provisions dedicated to ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts and their organization in the form of a single system of activities of the authorized subjects of the legislative procedure. The hermeneutic method helped to interpret the content of the regulatory provisions aimed at ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts. The systemic and structural method helped to identify the stages of regulatory support for the constitutionality of normative acts. The application of the prognostic method made it possible to identify problematic issues in the regulatory framework for ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts and to formulate legal and technological approaches to solving problems in this area. The purpose of the study is to provide a theoretical and legal assessment of such a little-known legal phenomenon as ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts – as a special legal function of the Rules of Procedure. The results of the study prove the objectivity of singling out such a function of the Rules as ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts and demonstrate the dialectic of its implementation at different stages of the legislative procedure, and identify certain legal issues in this area. Conclusions. One of the key functions of the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is the function of ensuring the constitutionality of normative acts, primarily laws. The realization of this function is systematic and progressive, being traced at different stages of the legislative procedure. It makes it possible to characterize the participation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in constitutional control over the constitutionality of laws as a highly specialized legal activity of authorized subjects, which is carried out within the structure of the legislative procedure and has the nature of preventive control, covering mainly different stages of preparation and consideration of draft laws. The main problems in this area are objective (such as fragmentary gaps or insufficient clarity of regulatory norms to ensure such constitutionality) and subjective (such as arbitrariness of the legislator's consideration of scientific, expert and legal opinions on the unconstitutionality of certain provisions contained in newly adopted laws and dominance of political interests over legal ones). At the same time, the logic of the presentation and the content of the regulatory provisions make it possible to comprehend the ways of optimizing some of its provisions with a view to exercising stricter internal parliamentary control over the constitutionality of laws in order to minimize the effort required for a possible challenge of such acts to their constitutionality before the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.