Conflict of interest: dialectics of a normative “tiered structure”

Objective: to carry out a legal and dogmatic analysis of the legislative structure of the “conflict of interests” concept and its constituent categories in order to ensure the applied tasks of effective law enforcement and prevention of corruption risks determined by a conflict of interests.

Methods: the dialectical approach to the cognition of socio-legal phenomena, which allows identifying the unity of opposites in the legal categories that form the conflict of interests concept; the formal-logical method of scientific cognition, presented in the legal-dogmatic analysis of legislative norms; the method of operationalization of concepts.

Results: the conducted comparative legal research, expressed in a combination of methods of analysis and synthesis of legal categories aimed at obtaining comparative knowledge, allows correlating their content with respect to the “conflict of interests” concept in proportion to the goals of law enforcement. A legal and linguistic analysis of legal categories has been carried out, the totality of which forms the content of the “conflict of interests” concept. Abstract and definite norms of categories are highlighted in the context of the proof necessary to ensure their connection (presence and absence) with legal facts.

Scientific novelty: the term “normative ‘tiered structure’” was introduced into the scientific circulation of legal science, which comprehensively reflects the operational definition of the complex socio-legal phenomena described in composite legal categories. The theoretically presented phenomenon of the normative “tiered structure” conflict of interest in the discreteness of its constituent concepts and dispositive legal categories causes high risks of distortion or erroneous interpretations. These risks are formed out of court, initially registered in the decisions of the conflicts of interest settlement commissions. Prevention of such risks is ensured not only by the involvement of experts who, in addition to legal knowledge and professional-industry knowledge, also have moral and ethical foundations, the bearers of which are the arbiters of precedent law enforcement.

Practical significance: the main provisions of the article can be used in practical activities to provide evidence of de jure manifestations of a conflict of interests. The revealed regulatory collisions and the incomplete legal regulation of public relations in the sphere of “personal interest” require improving the anti-corruption legislation in terms of simplifying the concept used for law enforcement purposes.

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