Ineffective law: definition and indicators

The concept of "an ineffective law" is more often used in the media or by individual politicians as a general concept for all legislative acts that have certain implementation problems. At the same time, research on such a legal category as an ineffective law in legal science is fragmentary. It has been established that ineffective laws do not achieve their intended legal regulation objectives or do not contain them at all, and therefore, the ratio of their results to the intended legal regulation objectives will be low. Similarly, the level of implementation of laws that declare unrealistic legal regulation objectives at the development stage will be low. In this context, we are talking mainly about the quality of the draft law itself, its validity, and its relevance to the state of development of social relations. The author points out that there is a category of laws that pursue exclusively political goals, which are real, but declare a formal, pretended goal that allows the draft law to be registered and go through all the necessary legislative procedures. Under such conditions, it is premature to talk about their ineffectiveness. It is emphasized that the adoption of ineffective laws is the result of conscious and unconscious law-making errors or ineffective law-making activities. The timely identification of ineffective laws and their exclusion or updating should be the focus of attention for both legislative initiators, scholars, and active members of civil society. Therefore, legal monitoring of legislation should focus on identifying ineffective laws for further review by the legislature. To prevent the adoption of ineffective laws, it is worth introducing an assessment of the potential effectiveness of a draft law, as this will allow for verification of its quality and relevance to the state of development of social relations, as well as the need to amend or create new legal regulations.