Classification of constitutional and legal models of responsibility of deputies: world experience and ukrainian practice

The article explores the important issue of the organization of power in modern states on the basis of responsible representative government, which implementation is possible only through the effective and responsible activities of Members of Parliament. The author emphasizes that the specifics of constitutional consolidation of legal responsibility of parliamentarians depends on the implementation of democratic standards of parliamentarism, and on the grounds of the study he identifies the following models of constitutional recognition of legal responsibility of deputies: traditional European, reformative, transitional, traditional national pro-European). The article also draws attention to the dominance of three primary ways of constitutional recognition of legal responsibility of parliamentarians: negative (prohibition to prosecute parliamentarians for certain types of offenses), positive (setting limits, specifics, types, basis of legal responsibility of parliamentarians) and mixed (combination of the above two elements and introduction of exception regulations from the sphere of legal responsibility (in particular, by establishing parliamentary immunities and indemnities)). Summarizing the analysis of the constitutional and legal regulation of these problems the author defines the characteristics of legal responsibility, in particular, in the form of a direct constitutional prohibition to bring parliamentarians to justice for certain acts, references to legislative regulation of the principles bringing parliamentarians to justice, fixing legal (constitutional) cases (grounds) of bringing parliamentarians to legal responsibility and certain constitutionally outlined (directly named) types of legal responsibility of parliamentarians, as well as establishing certain positive legal (constitutional and legal) obligations or prohibitions addressed directly to parliamentarians and determining instances of legal responsibility of parliamentarians. Thus, each of the resulted variants of the characteristic is illustrated by references to the constitutions of the corresponding states of Europe and the world. Due to the generalization of the constitutional models of legal responsibility of parliamentarians, the article compares it with basic legal features reflecting the judicial nature of this phenomenon, as well as draws parallels with the development of the institute in Ukraine; it is concluded that the abolition of parliamentary immunity in our state is only the beginning of reforms of the legal responsibility of People’s Deputies and it is a sign of approval of the principle of responsible representative government