Slovo of the National School of Judges of Ukraine. №4(53) 2025. P. 91-102

ISSN: 2707-6849     

UDC340.1

DOI https://doi.org/10.37566/2707-6849-2025-4(53)-8 

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Ivan KOTIUK,

Doctor of Law, Professor

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2475-0370

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Principle supremacy of rights:official interpretation and real contents

Abstract 

The paper highlights the reasons that predominated the traditional national understanding of the supremacy of rights and reveals its content and peculiarities of the impact on the further development of the legal system of Ukraine as well.

It is particularly stated that statutory national understanding of law in Ukraine is positivistic, resulting in concepts of “law” “legal acts” and “supremacy of statutory law” being identified here, and although the supremacy of rights is proclaimed in the title of Art. 8 of the Constitution of Ukraine, its content in the specified norm is revealed by virtue of supremacy of the Constitution. The viewpoint of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which identifies the law with lawmaking and “other social regulators”, is also controversial.

The article proves that: 1) the law is not a spontaneous imperative order, which solely depends on will (and often headstrongness) and discretion of the governmental power. It is a special social benefit based on requirements of life itself, in the context of which, despite the obvious disparity of inborn talents of one person before the other, the mutual relations between them should be based on recognition of technical parity of their social possibilities, predominated by the parity of everyone before nature; 2) when we recognize the supremacy of rights we must admit the fact that it means the supremacy not of lawmaking, but of rights of a person, and in the first place his/her natural rights, that may not be provided by lawmaking, as they can come out of its “spirit” and other social norms, and can even be denied by it if there is any non-legal law; 3) understanding of the sources of law should be built  taking into account the fact that first there are requirements of life reflected in both legal acts and in the other social norms;  4) recognition of the supremacy of  rights also predominates the fact that the concepts of “breach of the legislation requirements” and “breach of the law” should not be identified, and in this regard the categories of “lawmaking” and “law enforcement” activity need some reconsideration, and “awmaking” and “law enforcement” authorities as well; 5) as for interaction of natural and positive law – the natural one is being imposed by the community as the bearer of the supreme social power to the state and legalized by it, and becomes the positive law. But even under such conditions the supremacy of law, as moral and ethical imperative, generally recognized by the society, reserves its social status, and lawmaking only becomes one of the proofs of the fact that the state undertook a commitment of its unconditional provision; 6) in the end recognition of supremacy of rights and the specified changes, predominated by it, highlights the transition of legal system of Ukraine from the Romano-German legal system to Common Law one.

Keywords: understanding of law, supremacy of human rights, law, supremacy of statutory law, lawfulness, legality, sources of right, “just” (justice, justly).

References

1. Holovatyi S. Verkhovenstvo prava: monohrafiia. U 3-kh kn. Kyiv: Feniks, 2006. 1747 s. (in Ukr.).

2. Yurydychna entsyklopediia: v 6 t. / redkol.: Yu. Shemshuchenko ta in. Kyiv: Ukr. Entsykl., 1998. T. 5: P–S. 2003 (in Ukr.).

3. Rishennia Konstytutsiinoho Sudu Ukrainy vid 02.11.2004 r. № 15-rp. URL: http:zakon3.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/v015p710-04 (data zvernennia: 06.03.2026) (in Ukr.).

4. Kostytskyi M. V. Filosofski pytannia verkhovenstva prava. Kyiv: Akademichni chytannia KRTs APrNU, 2007. Vyp. 6. S. 4. (in Ukr.).

SuggestedCitation:  Kotiuk, I. (2025). Principle supremacy of rights: official interpretation and real contents. Slovo of the National School of Judges of Ukraine, 4 (53), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.37566/2707-6849-2025-4(53)-8

Date of first submission of the article to the publication: 10.01.2026

Date of acceptance of the article for publication after review: 17.03.2026

Date of publication (publication): 09.04.2026