On the Credibility and Novelty of Some Results in Modern Research on the Development of Scientific Concepts of Administrative Discretion and Police Law

The issues of administrative discretion and the formation of contemporary Russian police law are far from new to the field of administrative law science. Nevertheless, they remain highly relevant today, as their thorough exploration supports the alignment of Russian state-legal institutions and practices with the standards of a lawful, democratic state. An analysis of publications on administrative discretion and police law, including those addressing the evolution of related scientific concepts, unfortunately reveals that many of these works contain judgments, assessments, and conclusions that lack scientific novelty, are unreliable, or even improperly borrowed from scholarly sources not belonging to the authors themselves. The purpose of this article – prompted by reading A. N. Zherebtsov's textbook “Essays on the History of Russian Administrative Law Science” (Moscow: Prospekt, 2021) – is to restore fairness in the evaluation of the development of scholarly ideas on administrative discretion and police law. The main focus is placed on visually demonstrating, first, the inaccuracy of Zherebtsov's assessments regarding pre-revolutionary and Soviet legal scholars' views on administrative discretion, and second, instances of improper appropriation by Professor K. S. Belsky. Based on the volume of his publications, Belsky appears to hold a leading position among those studying police law. The article highlights that some positions and conclusions originally formulated within post-Soviet administrative legal science – particularly by the present author – were inappropriately used in Belsky’s work, especially those concerning police law as a developing sub-branch of modern administrative law. The article concludes that administrative discretion and police law are among the highly specialized topics in contemporary Russian administrative legal scholarship. These topics are not easily accessible and require researchers to deeply immerse themselves in the legal subject matter and carefully study the historical development of related legal doctrines. Further productive research into administrative discretion will be possible only if scholars focus on developing principles for the exercise of discretionary powers by public administration, drafting legislative proposals based on those principles, and proposing legal measures to define the depth and scope of judicial review of such discretion. As for police law, the current stagnation in this area could be overcome by drafting a new codified federal legislative act – the Police Code of the Russian Federation or the Code of the Russian Federation on Security (the latter title currently appears more suitable). Bringing such a proposal into the practical legal sphere will undoubtedly stimulate renewed research interest in police law.