The legal framework for prevention and counteraction to the negative consequences of the COVID-19

Today, humanity is faced with a new great challenge, whose large-scale consequences are already being observed in all spheres of life of modern society. Such serious events may include an outbreak of the COVID-19 declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The specific nature of the spread of the new pandemic has predetermined the introduction of a number of restrictive and preventive measures aimed at reducing the risk of infecting the population. However, both the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to combat it have become the catalysts for significant structural changes of a social, environmental and economic nature, including in the labor markets. In order to level out negative processes that are objectively developing in the labor markets, as well as potential socio-economic risks and their consequences, to ensure the preservation of a decent standard of living for the unemployed, to support and adapt to new working conditions, including through the use of digital computer technologies, which can also be used to combat epidemics in the future, it is necessary to develop the legal support which is adequate to these circumstances. In this regard, the prepared issue of the journal “Legal Concept = Pravovaya Paradigma” “The legal methods to reduce the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic” seeks to develop an integrated strategic concept of the formation of the legal mechanisms for regulating social, environmental and economic activities, given the complex epidemiological situation, the specific ways and means of regulating social relationships, including using digital information and the communication technologies in the period of the epidemic and post-coronavirus stage of social rehabilitation. The methodological framework for the complex project is a system approach, which is observed in the papers presented in the main topic of the issue and implemented by using a number of interrelated methods, namely: analysis, synthesis, system-element, system- structural, system-functional, system-communication, system-integrative, and system-historical methods. The general scientific methods used in the project can be divided into 3 groups. The group of theoretical methods includes the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete, hypothetical-deductive, axiomatic, and formalization methods for building the models of social relations that have undergone transformation against the background of the pandemic. The group of empirical methods includes data collection, comparison, description, measurement, and evaluation of the effects of the pandemic. The group of general logical methods includes abstraction, generalization, idealization, induction, analogy, modeling, probabilistic and statistical methods, which allow us to achieve consistent scientific conclusions in exact accordance with the project objectives. As part of the specific scientific legal methods, the project uses a dogmatic, legal and technical methods of interpretation of law, state-legal modeling, and comparative legal method, which allow us to form a scientifically based structure of mechanisms for the legal regulation of public relations in both the pandemic and post-coronavirus period.