Vol. 12 No. 1 (34) (2021)

The state border is one of the main the results of the realization of the people's right to self-determination, formalized in treaties with neighboring countries. In the 20th century, none of the three entities with the name Azerbaijan took place as an act of self-determination (referendum on independence). The first of them - the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) - was established by the Turkish army invading Baku in September 1918. The League of Nations refused ADR membership for absurd land claims. ADR  left the history without established borders after the entry in April 1920 of the XI Red Army of Soviet Russia in Baku and the proclamation of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (AzSSR) as a non-national, without the titular nation of a republic of a new type, in which the Armenians were considered as one of its co-founders. By the declaration of December 2. 1920 the AzSSR recognized Nakhichevan and Zangezur as integral parts of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ArmSSR) and the right of the Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) people to complete self-determination. NK was declared an integral part of the Armenian SSR on June 12. 1921. Bolsheviks who colluded with the Kemalists in 1921 forcibly seized Nakhichevan and NK from the Armenian SSR in favor of the AzSSR. The borders of the AzSSR, which arose by these acts of annexation, could not be legitimate. Legally null and void were both the Treaty of Kars that is still in force, according to which Nakhichevan was given under the auspices of the AzSSR, and the decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Caucasian Bureau of the RCP (b)), which was not actually accepted (not even put to a vote). NK was torn away from the Armenian SSR with the condition of granting it "broad regional autonomy", but in violation of this condition in 1923 autonomy was decreed on one third of NK. The districts of NK bordering on the Armenian SSR remained outside the region. 1988-1991 Baku, in response to a request for reunification with the Armenian SSR, carried out genocidal acts against Armenians practically throughout the republic. On August 30, 1991, at the end of the collapse of the USSR, it was decided in Baku to abandon the succession of the AzSSR and restore the statehood of the ADR, which left without acquired borders and did not have sovereignty in NK. The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) was proclaimed on September 2 on the territories not legally belonging to the AR. The political decision of the EU, adopted in December 1991, to recognize AR within the borders of the AzSSR did not give legitimacy to these borders, since they were formed as a result of annexations. The AR of our days has no legitimate borders. Its borders with the Republic of Armenia are now being "specified" for those territories seized from the Armenian SSR in 1921, which were supposed to be within the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The article gives a legal assessment of the above and related to the topic of other documents.

Within the framework of this article, the crime of creating, organizing or managing a financial pyramid has been studied in detail. Analyzing the crime in the light of foreign regulations, practical cases and the draft Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, a number of shortcomings related to the article were revealed, the solution of which can result in making the article applicable in reality, giving adequate qualifications to many publicly dangerous situations.

One of the most important and problematic issues of the theory and practice of criminal procedure –the methodological issues of legal regulation of the institute of jurisdiction, are discussed in the article presented. Jurisdiction, being one of the criteria for determining “a court established by law,” is not properly regulated by the RA Code of Criminal Procedure. On one hand, the concept of jurisdiction corresponds to the concept of the competences of the court, in the other case refers to the legal definition of the court, and as a result leads to methodological problems. Based on the foregoing, the author discussed the essence of each of the concepts of jurisdiction and competence, their interrelation and delimitation, and suggested proposals to resolve highlighted issues in the RA Criminal Procedure Code.

 In legal doctrine, the problem of the correlation between a legal presumption and a legal norm is by no means new. The subject of scientific debate, formed by two points of view, is whether a legal presumption is a legal norm or not. In particular, one group of scientists is inclined to equate a legal presumption with a legal norm, while another group tries to deny the identification of the latter. In other words, jurists cannot develop a unified approach to this problem, which, naturally, prevents the development of the concept of a general theory of integration of sectoral approaches to legal presumptions.

Regarding the problem under discussion the author adheres to an approach that does not identify a legal presumption with a legal norm. Therefore, in order to develop the concept of a general theory of integrating sectoral approaches to legal presumptions within the framework of this article, the author first turned to the existing approaches on the correlation between a legal presumption and a legal norm, the advantages and disadvantages of the latter, and then tried to solve this problem within the framework of the instrumental theory of law; (1) a general description of a legal norm as a legal measure was presented, listing the differences between a legal norm and a legal presumption, (2) the correlation between a legal norm and a legal presumption as an auxiliary legal measure was discussed.

The article discusses the functions of the Court of Cassation of RA which it applies when a cassation complaint does not comply with the requirements of the law. In the article the Author finds that among the three types of decisions enshrined in the Codes of Civil Procedure and Administrative Procedure the function of leaving the cassation appeal without examination is the most problematic one. Speaking about the legal consequences of the decision of the Cassation Court to leave the cassation appeal without examination, the author notes that these consequences are completely different in the Civil Procedure and Administrative Procedure Codes, in particular, under the Administrative Procedure Code, the person has the right re-submit the cassation appeal after eliminating the reasons for leaving the appeal without the examination while under the Civil Procedure Code  there is no such right, which creates legal confusion as both decisions are made by the same Civil and Administrative Chamber of the Cassation Court. Author concludes that there should be only two consequences if the Cassation Court does not admit the cassation aplleal into proceedings: 1) the appellant has an opportunity to eliminate the reasons for not admitting the appeal into proceedings and to lodge it again; and 2) the appellant is deprived of any opportunity to lodge the appeal again. In addition, in case of the aforementioned consequences, under current legal regulations, the frst one is caused when returning the cassation appeal and the second one when rejecting the cassation appeal. As a result of this, the question of the consequences for the appellant when leaving the appeal without examination is being left unanswered as well as the reasonability and expediency of this function vested with the Cassation Court. Thus the Author auggests to exclude the power of the Cassation Court to leave the cassation appeal without examination before admitting it into proceedings, and to remove this  regulation from the RA Civil Procedure  and Admninistartive Procedure Codes. Two of the grounds for leaving a cassation appeal without examination, must be foreseen as grounds for returning the cassation appeal, and the other grounds as a ground for rejecting the cassation appeal.