The Structure of Law-Application Discretion as a General Theoretical Model of Legal Choice

The article substantiates the structure of law-application discretion as a general theoretical model of legal choice. Discretion is considered not as a defect of legal regulation or a consequence of legislative incompleteness, but as a legally organized mechanism for concretizing law under conditions of legally significant uncertainty. The proposed model includes interrelated elements: the subject, objective, content, teleological, axiological and formal-resultative components, as well as the ground of discretion and the limits separating lawful choice from arbitrariness. Particular attention is paid to the fact that subjects of legal discretion may include not only public authorities, but also private persons when the law grants them a legally meaningful space for choice. The practical significance of the model lies in its applicability to the analysis of judicial and administrative decisions and to the assessment of the reasoning, proportionality and verifiability of law-application choice.