Soft law as a regulatory tool between law and policy

The paper deals with the problem of interpreting the soft law in the context of structural and functional analysis as one of the main research methods of political and legal phenomena. The author reviews the existing approaches to interpreting the soft law in domestic and international legal literature. The analysis demonstrates that if the soft law is recognized as an independent political and legal phenomenon, in fact, it is reviewed in the context of the functional approach avoiding the structural analysis, since the latter leads to an obvious conflict with the concepts of law at large and the means of legal regulation. The research is based on the general and special scientific methods as well as the structural and functional analysis of political and legal phenomena. It is concluded that a functional approach is the most useful and helpful technique for analyzing the soft law as a political and legal category.