Legal Aspects of Regulating the Legal Liability of Public Servants: Problematic Issues

Abstract

This study investigates topical problematic issues of legislative regulation of the responsibility of public service employees because such responsibility is multifaceted if compared with the responsibility of an ordinary employee, as far as it is related to the range of powers assigned to a person to exercise administrative, legal, and managerial influence on public relations in the state. It is the image of the public service of Ukraine that is based on whether its representatives perform their official duties, and in case of non-performance or improper performance, state coercion is applied to the public servant according to the procedure established by law. The regulated procedure of applying a particular type of legal liability makes up not only the conviction of a public servant, but also an incentive for other persons to properly perform their official duties and prevent illegal actions. The purpose of this study was to identify and solve problematic aspects of the responsibility of public service employees. To fulfil this purpose, scientific positions on understanding the concept of legal responsibility in two aspects, as positive and retrospective responsibility, are considered, and the definition of legal responsibility of a public servant is given. It was established that if a public servant violates the provisions of the current legislation of Ukraine, the following types of legal liability will be applied: administrative, criminal, civil, material, and disciplinary. Using system-structural and system-functional methods, a systematised analysis of the regulatory framework of each of these types of legal liability was performed; methods of comparison and grouping distinguished the material and civil liability of public servants in Ukraine and identified groups of relevant principles of public servant responsibility in administrative law and in compliance with labour discipline according to current regulations. Ways to solve urgent and problematic legal aspects of the legal responsibility of public service employees were proposed.