The principle of legality in church law: problem statement

The article discusses problems of legal principles - key norms, their interpretation and understanding in the ecclesiastical and secular legal traditions. Particular importance is given to the principle of legality and its place in modern church legal proceedings. An attempt is made to identify fundamental differences in the law enforcement approaches of the Church and the state, as well as to find compromise models in order to qualitatively transform the mechanism of church judicial proceedings, taking into account both a special nature of the Church’s legal system and effective experience of secular jurisprudence. To achieve this goal, a comparative legal method is used. As a result, it is concluded that there are implicit signs of synchronization of the two systems in certain aspects, and they can become a source of positive effects in practice under certain conditions. The need to study the problem in this perspective is determined not only by theoretical demands of the further development of church legal science, but also by today’s urgent tasks facing church justice that is continuously implemented in everyday life by the relevant authorities.