Happy Constitution Day, Kazakhstan!

inherent in the legal systems of Western states, that goes back to ancient Rome. At the same time, the very legal system of a specific country, including in its content the nature of the sources of law and the ways of their interpretation, specific legal institutions, legal practice, the originality of legal thinking, the role of legal doctrine and a number of other components is not a fixed phenomenon. The current Constitution of Kazakhstan, adopted at the national referendum in 1995, formed a unique framework for the state and legal development of Kazakhstan, as well as the framework of its legal system as a whole.

Therefore, the state-legal development of Kazakhstan changed rapidly, but this development was carried out within the framework of this Constitution, since such basic values ​​of the state as presidential form of government, territorial integrity and unitary form of state structure remained unchanged. The adoption of the new Constitution marked the fact of the further development of the country as a democratic and legal state. Today, the Constitution of Kazakhstan is turning 23!

Through the Constitution, the national legal system is directly linked to modern international law. The transmission function of the Constitution derives from the nature of its supremacy throughout the territory of an independent country and the mandatory compliance of elements of the existing law with constitutional norms. General provisions on the fundamentals of the constitutional system of the country, the norms on the rights and freedoms of man and citizen are enshrined in the Constitution of Kazakhstan in accordance with the standards of the basic documents of modern international law. At the same time, a person, his life, rights and freedoms in accordance with the Article 1 of the Constitution of f Kazakhstan are the highest values.

History explains that the first liberal constitutions in their modern understanding are associated with the Age of Enlightenment and the seizure of power by the bourgeoisie. However, there is the concept of "real constitution", which goes back to Aristotle. Ancient Greek philosopher understood as such any state system determined by the values ​​and norms recognized in it. It can be religious and political commandments, unwritten centuries-old traditions. Understandable in this sense, constitutionalism goes back to the distant past. And the ancient Greek polices themselves, studied and described by Aristotle, were just a classic example. Whether the Athenian democracy, where some people - Athenian citizens - enjoyed all the rights and freedoms, and the other part - slaves - and for people it was not considered. Be a Spartan oligarchy, where ever-engaged war spartiates lived and fed at the expense of helots oppressed by them, and not enough strong babies were supposed to be thrown out of the rock. Be that as it may, it was an established and recognized state of affairs.

One of the first officially accepted documents that actually had the character of a constitution in its current sense was the Magna Carta, which appeared in England already as early as 1215, than the English are much proud of. In the modern understanding, the constitution is a set of laws fixed in an official document (or documents) that fixes the foundations of the political, economic and legal systems of the state, the basis of the legal status of the state and the individual, their rights and duties. The first documents that responded to this description appeared at the end of the 18th century in the United States - the Bill of Rights - and in France - the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. On the basis of these documents in the countries mentioned, acts appearing directly bearing the name 'Constitution' soon appeared. Their fate is different. American Constitution adopted in 1787, is still in force, with slight amendments. In France, only during the Revolution, the constitution underwent changes four times.

Soviet constitutions were adopted four times throughout years. The first was the Basic Law of Soviet Russia, while the rest were already accepted in the union state, and, accordingly, the constitutions of national-state entities were adopted. Thus, the first Constitution of Kazakhstan was adopted in the final version by the decision of the Central Electoral Commission of the Kazakh Autonomous Republic in 1926. The Constitution of the Kazakh SSR was adopted during the 10th Kazakhstan Congress of Soviets in 1937. After the appearance in the USSR of the so-called Brezhnev constitution, a new Kazakhstani one appeared - in 1978.

The first Constitution of independent Kazakhstan was adopted at the ninth session of the Supreme Council of Kazakhstan of the 12th convocation on January 28, 1993. It proclaimed people's sovereignty, independence of the state, the principle of separation of powers, recognition of the Kazakh language as state, recognition of the President by the Head of State and so on. Securing the independence of Kazakhstan, the 1993 Constitution at the same time reflected the complexity and inconsistency of the first years of independence and sparked broad discussions about the powers of the legislative and executive branches of government and on a number of other issues.

This day - August 30 - has been a state holiday. Since the adoption of the main law, it has been amended and supplemented three times. An important problem of the modern life of some countries, regardless of the level of their development, regional, ethnic, religious or other features, has become the legitimacy of state power. In the theory of law, legitimacy is an indispensable feature of any civilized state, denoting recognition of it both domestically and internationally. As the world practice shows, in most cases, international and domestic state recognition is associated with the format of adoption and the level of implementation of the country's Basic Law, which should be based on the interests of broad segments of the population, democratic principles of organization of power and governance, the rule of law, universally recognized international standards and others. The main document of the country should reflect the aspirations of the people, express and consolidate its interests, and this is possible only with the direct participation of the people in its preparation and adoption. Securing the legitimacy of statehood is a very difficult task, the gross neglect of which is fraught with systemic violations of human rights, and sometimes with chaos and destabilization.

The main law of the country is the result of many years of collective work, the sources of which were the President of Kazakhstan - the leader of the nation Nursultan Nazarbayev, who managed to rally around himself millions of Kazakhstanis during that difficult period, and acted as a generator of ideas while developing his project.

Estimating the distance traveled, it is possible to state with confidence that a great work on the implementation of constitutional values ​​has been done in the past, short by historical standards. This is largely facilitated and facilitated by the rigid installation of the Head of State to ensure the full realization of the potential of the Constitution in all spheres of life. As the leader of the nation repeatedly noted, the independence of the state is unshakable only with absolute observance of the Constitution and laws, first of all by the citizens themselves.

Due to a correct and clearly verified constitutional policy, Kazakhstan achieved impressive results in all spheres. The implementation of the content of constitutional matter is carried out systematically in accordance with the provisions of the Addresses and speeches of the Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country's strategic documents, the main content of which derives from the goals defined by the Constitution. The activities of state bodies, public institutions and citizens, the country's successes, peaceful and quiet life, confidence in the future, the growth of Kazakhstan's authority in the international arena are based on legal provisions defined by the Constitution, which means that the internal and foreign policy of the state determined by the President the will of the people.

Taking into account world experience and national peculiarities, Kazakhstan managed to ensure the implementation of these processes exclusively within the legal framework. The principle of Kazakhstani patriotism, enshrined in the Constitution, received a full-fledged ideological basis, including such unshakable common values ​​as Kazakhstan's independence, national unity, peace and harmony, secular society and high spirituality, economic growth based on industrialization and innovation, Society Universal labor, common history, culture and language, national security and global participation in solving global and regional problems.

The Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan establishes a broad list of civil rights. Unlike the Constitutions of the Soviet period, which gave secondary importance to civil rights in the general hierarchy of human rights, in the Constitution of country, civil rights of a person are consistently consolidated. These rights in the hierarchy of human rights are fundamental, as they provide for the autonomy of the individual, protect her individual interests, they are aimed at ensuring the freedom of the individual in the sphere of private life, and his legal protection against any outside interference.

Among the civil rights, of course, the most important is the right to life, which is the primary basis of all other rights. It receives a fixation in Article 15 of the Constitution. Civil rights include such rights as the right to personal freedom and immunity. Personal freedom is an inalienable and absolute human right, arising from the natural nature of man himself. Equally important are the rights to privacy, personal and family secrets, protection of honor and dignity , inviolability of the home. Private life is a sphere of human life that should not be subject to state control. Thus, civil rights include the full range of rights that ensure personal security and human immunity. However, the key to understanding the essence of civil rights is the way in which special procedures are implemented in order to make human rights real. In this regard, the Constitution of Kazakhstan provides for constitutional guarantees of natural inalienable human rights.

In this regard, the Constitution of Kazakhstan provides for a number of constitutional guarantees for the right to life. In the basic law it is established that no one has the right to arbitrarily deprive a person of life, that the death penalty is established by law as an exceptional measure of punishment for terrorist crimes involving the death of people, as well as for particularly serious crimes committed in wartime, with the granting of a right of appeal to a sentenced person to pardon. This effectively nullifies the use of the death penalty, which is a condition for the democracy of the state. The main human right is the right to personal freedom. Therefore, let us pay attention to the constitutional norm, which fixes the judicial guarantee for the exercise of this right. Arrest and detention are allowed only in cases stipulated by law and only with the sanction of the court with the granting of the right of appeal to the arrested person. Without the sanction of the court, a person may be detained for a period not exceeding seventy-two hours. Throughout the world it is recognized that judicial protection is the most democratic. 

The Article 31 of the Constitution establishes that the concealment by officials of facts and circumstances that threaten the life and health of people entails responsibility in accordance with the law. It proclaims that the state aims at protecting the natural environment that is conducive to human life and health. At the same time, officials do not have the right to hide information that threatens the life and health of people. On this constitutional norm all modern ecological policy and a whole complex of legislative acts of Kazakhstan are based. Article 17 of the Constitution establishes that the human dignity is inviolable, that no one should be subjected to torture, violence, other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment. This right is very important, because even if a person has violated the law, it should not be outlawed. That is, even if there are all grounds for limiting the right to personal freedom, restrictions on their rights must be established by law. The article 13 of the main law proclaims human rights for the recognition of legal personality and the protection of their rights and freedoms by all means that do not contradict the law, including necessary defense, to receive qualified legal assistance. 

Civic rights include freedom of expression. It proclaims that everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, which includes the right to independently determine one's attitude towards religion, profess any religion or not to profess any, adhere to religious or other, including atheistic beliefs, spread their beliefs and act in accordance with them. This right indicates that the state does not exert pressure on personal beliefs, does not pursue the individual's religious beliefs. Equally important is the right of everyone who is legally located in the territory of Kazakhstan to move freely through its territory and freely choose the place of residence, and also to travel outside the country and to return unhindered to the Republic. 

Thus, the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan recognizes an extensive list of civil rights. The Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan also secured the political rights of citizens. The political rights of citizens express the individual's ability to participate in the political life of the country and the exercise of state power, therefore they are no less important for the democratic character of the legal status of the individual.

The Constitution of Kazakhstan creates favorable conditions for the formation of a full-fledged civil society. First of all, the property right is secured - private and public, which are equally protected by the state. Constitutionally guaranteed ownership and guarantees of its protection. The stability of the political system ensures public consensus - the existence of significant support for the existing state structure and policies and the lack of active rejection of them, which allows us to manage society by non-violent methods. Public consensus (civil consent) is based on the recognition of human rights and freedoms as a fundamental priority value and the most important principles for the organization and implementation of power. At the same time they proceed from the fact that the natural and inalienable rights and freedoms of a person are connected both with public political power and with the members of the political community. They outline those facets, which are not allowed to transgress neither to the state, nor to separate individuals. This ensures the optimal correlation of individual freedom and social solidarity, when the freedom of another acts as a restraint of one's own freedom. It seems that the vector of political and legal development of Kazakhstan's society is constitutionalism.

Civil rights, along with political rights over time, are the rights of the first generation. The rights of the first generation realize the so-called negative freedom and oblige the state to refrain from interfering in the spheres regulated by these rights. Civil and political rights allow you to achieve all other rights. Only if they are available, the state and the personality are partners, if they do not exist, then the person depends on the steward. Political rights include freedom of speech and creativity, prohibition of censorship. Freedom of speech and creativity is a constructive possibility of the external manifestation of the inner world of man.

This right is an external manifestation of the freedom of thought - human rights have their own ideas and beliefs; it creates prerequisites for the self-realization of the individual, is an indispensable condition for the realization of the majority of constitutional rights and freedoms, primarily political ones. Therefore, in the system of human rights and freedoms, freedom of expression and freedom of speech is the basis of the foundations of a civilized society, an evaluation criterion of the democratic nature of the political regime. The right to freedom of speech is quite complex. First, it is the freedom of each person to express his thoughts and judgments on condition that he follows the precepts of the law; secondly, it is the freedom of the press and other media, freedom from censorship and the right to create media that allows to materialize the freedom of expression and belief; thirdly, freedom of speech presupposes the right to be informed, that is, to have access to sources of information.

The Constitution, through directed regulation, ensures the sustainable development of the social system "man - civil society - state - world". It is designed to balance the political forces; peace, order and progress; branches and institutions of central government; a catalog of human rights and mechanisms for their guarantees and protection; freedom of labor, entrepreneurship and the social responsibility of owners, the participation of the state in regulating economic life in the public interest; protection of national interests and participation in the union of republics and the world community. Establishing the conditions for all participants of the social system, the Constitution fulfills the role of a general social regulator of public relations, since it organizes, establishes and directs them to the normative plane.

The Constitution, carrying out a system-forming function, serves as the main organizing link, the core of the legal system ensuring its balance, and in this sense can not but influence the nature of the prescriptions contained in it, their links with other legal norms. The system-forming role of the Constitution is continuously growing, and this trend has objective reasons: the need for using the law as a regulator of public relations is increasing, as a result of which the number of adopted legislative acts is growing, new branches of law are appearing. In this regard, the need to ensure the unity of the entire legal system, the conformity of the new acts of the Constitution2 becomes of particular urgency.

The Constitution should be a document of consent and civil peace, representing a mechanism for harmonizing interests and seeking a social compromise. The Constitution is the fruit of a combination of differently directed social interests, the legal form of their union and consensus. The necessary indicator of the effectiveness of the Constitution is that its protection is accompanied not by civil war, but by the development of institutions protecting the civil peace.

The Constitution is a means of achieving national harmony if its development and adoption are a process that is open, collective, involving various forces and taking into account opposing approaches. It can be called ripe, fair and ineffective if around the ideas concluded in it there will be agreement in the main strata of society: in various elites, in the intelligentsia, among the masses.

The formation of modern Kazakhstani statehood was predetermined by universal civilizational processes. Therefore, the manifestation of true interest in the meaning of Kazakhstan's constitutionalism is associated with the constitutional evolution of Kazakhstan. The constitutional process in Kazakhstan is developing quite dynamically. During the period of the acquisition of sovereignty, the Constitution in force in Kazakhstan is the second Constitution.

Human rights are a system of conditions and benefits (material and spiritual), without which its normal life activity, the development of its individual properties, free choice and self-determination, the realization of civil interests are impossible. A philosopher once said that civil interests is life, freedom, health and the absence of bodily suffering and the possession of such external goods as money, land, houses, and household utensils. The Kazakh society has embarked on the path of political and social transformation. Kazakhstan is a democratic, secular, legal and social state whose highest values ​​are a person, his life is rights and freedoms. We have all the prerequisites that determine the relationship between a person and the state on the basis of the principles of democracy and humanism.

An analysis of civil and political rights and freedoms of a person and citizen under the Constitution testifies that it becomes an important stage in the way of ensuring human rights, a legal guarantor of the protection of the autonomy of the individual, the space of action of individual and private interests. The state does not pretend to be an all-controlling and all-pervasive organization. This is the most important prerequisite for the formation of civil society in Kazakhstan. It is a certain autonomy of the individual, its security, the provision of conditions for its active work and participation in solving the problems of society and the state, will become the basis for the formation of civil society in sovereign Kazakhstan.

On the conviction of the Constitutional Council, the unconditional and proper maintenance of the supremacy and direct action of the Basic Law, the steadfast observance of constitutional material and procedural prescriptions is an indispensable requirement for all state and public institutions, officials and citizens. The embodiment of the will of the people in laws and other important state acts, as well as the continuous improvement of procedures for the influence of citizens on public institutions, are an effective guarantee of internal stability, economic progress and improvement of the well-being of the population. It is necessary to continue to maintain and strengthen the trust of Kazakhstanis on the basis of constitutional values, social partnership, a combination of interests and interaction of the individual, society and the state. Strict adherence to the Constitution is the key to the successful development of Kazakhstan

The Constitution establishes that human rights and freedoms can not be arbitrarily restricted by anyone; they can be limited only by law and only to the extent necessary for the protection of the constitutional order, the protection of public order, human rights and freedoms, the health and morality of the population. The exercise of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen should not violate the rights and freedoms of others, encroach on the constitutional order and public morality

The system of rights and freedoms of a person and citizen guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, directly impacts the creation of harmonious relationships, balanced ways of people's interaction with each other and the formation of normal relations between the citizen and the state.