“The interests of the child” as a legal category

“Тhe interests of the child” is a concept which has different content and tone in the theory of law and in the practice of its application. The legal experts offer an opinion of the substitution of the existing ambiguous term “children's interests” for the specific and more meaningful regulation of the rights of children. In this connection, the author of the work has set the goal to study the concept of “the interests of the child” as a legal category. Methods: a methodological basis for this study is a set of scientific methods, among which the main are the methods of system and comparative legal analysis, logical comparison, and matching. Results: the reasonable author's attitude to the problem of correlation of the concepts of “children's rights” and “the interests of the child” is based on the competent scientific environment' opinion of the legal status of minors. In the work the author investigates the concept of “the interests of the child” in terms of its consolidation in the Russian and international documents in the field of protection of children's rights. Conclusions: as a result of the study the author has found out the nature and characteristics of the interests of the child. It has been established that “the interest”, as a legal category, represents the core of the legal regulation and determines its direction with well-defined objectives which can be achieved by means of one or another legal norm. There has been specified the significance of the Federal law “On Fundamental Guarantees of Rights of Children in the Russian Federation” as the document providing the main guarantees of the rights and legal interests of children, in order to create legal, social and economic conditions for their implementation.