Objective: to theoretically substantiate the basic principles of methodology of a new interdisciplinary area of socio-humanities – the digital history of law; to demonstrate the heuristic potential of digital technologies in legal historical sciences.

Methods: the study is based on systemic, formal-logical, and comparative general scientific methods.

Results: it is concluded that the methodology of the digital history of law is based, first of all, on the source-centric approach, which considers a source as a macro-object of humanitarian and social sciences, through which information exchange takes place (O.M. Medushevskaya’s concept of cognitive history). Secondly, it is based on the combination of traditional methods of legal history with digital techniques and technologies and methods based on them – within a research program of historical-legal (historical-juridical) source studies. The article attempts to summarize the existing digital technologies and techniques, as well as methods based on them, as applied to legal historical sciences; their heuristic potential is shown in case studies.

Scientific novelty: for the first time in the Russian legal history science, the author substantiates the methodology of the digital history of law as an interdisciplinary field that studies the past of state and law using digital information and communication technologies and tools.

Practical significance: under the shifts in socio-humanities (digital, linguistic, visual ones, etc.), which have become relevant in recent years, and the development of the digital type of social communication, methodological approaches to obtaining new knowledge are changing, new interdisciplinary branches of scientific knowledge are emerging, as well as new requirements for the qualification of researchers. The ongoing changes affect legal historical sciences: digital history of law is formed as an interdisciplinary area within digital humanities, at the confluence of history, legal science, and information science. The understanding and application of digital technologies and the scientific cognition methods based on them in legal historical research open up new opportunities for legal historians in determining the directions of their scientific research and obtaining new scientific results. This ultimately expands our understanding of historical and legal facts, phenomena and processes.

Objective: to determine the possibility of professional legal activity automation and to identify the limitations that in a democratic society are associated with the use of software capable of generating effective legal solutions in conflict situations.

Methods: the conducted empirical research is based on the methodology of social sciences, sociology of law, principles of communicative and communicational theories of law, and formal-legal analysis of legal documents.

Results: the paper presents examples of functioning of computer systems that imitate some specific aspects of human intelligence in decision-making. The concept of algorithm and the main characteristics of tasks performed by artificial intelligence systems are defined. The relevance, methods and achievements of sociology of law are outlined, which underlie the systems or computer programs helping to resolve legal conflicts. It is found that the research tools developed as a methodology within the sociology of law since its emergence will be more widely used in the future, due to the growing use of information and communication technologies in legal activities. It is shown that in the administration of justice it is impossible to generate solutions only on the basis of artificial intelligence, since law and the process of making legal decisions on its basis has more complex characteristics in a democratic society. It is emphasized that obtaining the desired legal result is not limited to the processes of algorithmization, categorization or formal exegetics of legal texts. It rather consists in understanding and thinking in accordance with the accepted values, meanings, evaluative criteria, strategies, perspectives, etc.

Scientific novelty: the article reveals the significance of the principles of communicative and communicational theories of law under the development of information and communication technologies in legal activity. The main limitations of the use of artificial intelligence in legal activity and, in particular, in justice are identified.

Practical significance: the formulated provisions help, while improving legal regulation, to avoid insufficiently justified decisions on the automation of law enforcement, as well as to take into account the increasing importance of the principles of communicative and communicational theories of law in such types of legal activities as creation, interpretation and application of laws.

Objective: to trace the development trajectory of legal regulation in the field of artificial intelligence in the People’s Republic of China by revealing the advantages and disadvantages of China’s approach to artificial intelligence regulation and to outline the prospects of national regulation for the nearest future, taking into account the world experience.

Methods: general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, classification, systemic and functional approaches. Also, the formal-legal, comparativelegal, and historical-legal methods were used.

Results: the research demonstrates the validity of Chinese claims for world leadership in the creation of legal regulation of artificial intelligence, as it is in China that the first normative legal acts were adopted. These acts have already entered into force; however, each of them deals with a narrow range of issues, while there is no law to establish general rules for the artificial intelligence industry. Among the characteristic features of the Chinese approach we can name, first of all, its iterative nature, which allows adjusting the regulation with each new step. Another feature is the sectoral nature of the regulation.

Scientific novelty: in the course of the research, the development stages of artificial intelligence legal regulation in China were identified and described; the advantages and disadvantages of the Chinese approach to regulation were identified and argued; this approach was compared with the approaches of China’s main rivals competing with it in terms of the technology development and its legal regulation. All of the above allowed making conclusions about the subsequent development of legal regulation in China and in the whole world.

Practical significance: familiarization with the research materials enables interested legal scholars, and not only them, to get a clear idea of the level of artificial intelligence regulation, achieved by China. China’s experience is of significant interest to the rest of the world, showing the correctness or faults of possible regulatory options in the new and complex field. The study results can be used in the practice of legal regulation in the sphere of artificial intelligence, as well as in preparing lectures in the relevant courses and writing tutorials for law students.

Objective: to identify the possibilities for an adequate response of the existing legal regime to the various challenges posed to European law by artificial intelligence systems underlying neuromarketing techniques.

Methods: the study is based on the risk-oriented approach, formal-logical, formal-legal and comparative-legal methods, as well as on the method of legal forecasting, in order to identify the problems of legislation caused by the emerging technologies capable of recognizing human emotions and using them to control consumer behavior, and to propose ways to solve them.

Results: the conducted research provides a brief overview of the most widely used neuromarketing techniques used by algorithms and machine learning. These allow identifying points of cognitive and emotional vulnerability, collecting and processing data, and then building the most effective marketing techniques that push a consumer to choose a certain product or service. Ethical problems are analyzed which arise from the use of neuromarketing techniques in relation to some basic values such as individual independence, human dignity, and freedom of choice. The subtle line is shown between techniques that manipulate consumer behavior (manipulation technique) and those that, on the contrary, have a persuasive effect, which in itself does not make them illegal (persuasion technique). An overview of the existing legal framework is presented, as well as case law from both the European Court of Justice and national courts of member states with a particular focus on the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the EU General Regulation on the Protection of Personal Data (hard law), and codes of ethics (soft law).

Scientific novelty: the paper points out the transformation of traditional legal categories and important problem points of the existing regulation due to the growing recognition of the potential of neuromarketing as a tool capable of explaining and predicting consumer behavior, as well as influencing the economic behavior of the subjects of relations.

Practical significance: the obtained conclusions and proposals can be taken into account in improving the regulation of artificial intelligence in terms of its safety and reliability, increasing trust in the system, given the need to protect ethical principles and maintain fundamental values.

Objective: to identify gaps and formulate proposals on legal regulation of the use of artificial intelligence in the activities of religious associations and control (supervision) over them.

Methods: the study is based on sectoral and risk-oriented approaches, formal-logical and comparative general scientific methods, as well as on the method of legal forecasting.

Results: the author noted similarity of ethical principles formulated all over the world in the sphere of artificial intelligence development and application, as well as their general shortcomings, namely, the lacking consideration of the specificity in certain spheres of human life (religious sphere), cultural peculiarities, historical development of a country and people. The shortcomings of principles stipulated by the codes of ethics include their recommendatory nature, which creates a basis for abusing them in certain cases. The author proposes that if control and supervisory authorities caused harm while using artificial intelligence, the relevant public authority should be recognized as liable and obliged to compensate for the harm caused.

Scientific novelty: the paper summarizes the practice of religious associations using AI, formulates current and prospective directions of the use of artificial intelligence by religious associations, and makes proposals for the AI use in controlling (supervising) religious associations’ activities.

Practical significance: the main conclusions and proposals can be used for the improvement of legislation on religious associations’ activities and control (supervision) over them, as well as for developing legal regulation of the AI use in control and supervision activities. The author identified the possibilities for religious associations using AI to popularize religion, inform about their activities, manage property, analyze sacred texts to improve their understanding and interpretation, as well as for conducting scientific research, systematization and accumulation of information, preservation of cultural heritage, and educational activities. The use of artificial intelligence in controlling the religious associations’ activities can reduce the period of religious organizations’ registration and inspections and optimize the work of control bodies, including by monitoring the religious situation.

Objective: to conceptualize, from the viewpoint of personal data protection legislation, the development of natural language processing technology, identifying possible legal barriers to such development and directions for further research of the issue.

Methods: the research is based on general scientific methods of cognition, along with which formal-legal and comparative-legal methods were applied, as well as the method of theoretical modeling.

Results: it was found that the observance of personal data regime natural language processing in the development of natural language processing technology leads technology, to a conflict between private-legal and public-legal interests, which, personal data in turn, creates obstacles for further development of this technology. The shortcomings of the existing legal order are shown, namely, the insufficient correspondence to the technical features of technology development. This may lead to the risks of excessive regulation, or, on the contrary, to the risks of neglecting critical areas that require protection. Problems in qualifying the data involved in the technology development are outlined. An attempt is made to define the limits of ensuring the lawfulness of personal data processing within the natural language processing technology. The material, temporal and territorial effect of the legal regulation in this field is identified as the limits of ensuring the legality. The author touches upon the possibility of using personal data as a consideration, which is important for the development of natural language processing technology and for the improvement of the information and communication technology industry.

Scientific novelty: the paper supplements the scientific discussion on the legal regulation of personal data processing by artificial intelligence systems with an analysis of natural language processing technology. The latter is insufficiently studied, making it relevant to research information law, namely, the legal relations arising around artificial intelligence systems, and to assess the impact of a personal data regime on the development of natural language processing technology.

Practical relevance: the applied aspects of the problems researched and the results obtained can be used to improve the legal regulation of public relations in the field of creation and development of artificial intelligence, as well as to identify and assess the legal risks arising in the personal data processing by developers of digital products based on natural language processing technology.

Objective: to answer the question whether the authors’ moral rights the in the digital environment correspond to their original purpose, and to determine the impact of the development of social networking platforms, artificial intelligence technologies and non-fungible tokens (NFT) on the transformed role and features of the protection of the author’s moral rights under modern conditions.

Methods: the research is based on historical-legal, comparative-legal and formal-dogmatic methods. Legal institutions and legal practice on the issue of protection of the author’s moral rights are subjected to critical analysis.

Results: the genesis and normative fixation of the author’s moral rights are investigated in historical retrospect. It is noted that at present the protection of these rights is insufficiently regulated at the international level, while national copyright law, for example, of continental European states, provides a sufficiently strong protection of the author’s moral rights; however, the effectiveness of the latter is weakening in the digital age. The paper analyzes the changing landscape of copyright relations caused by technological progress: in social networks, in the generation of works by artificial intelligence, and in the creation of digital works of art. The thesis is substantiated that the author’s moral rights are undesirable in the context of social platforms. The paper proposes solutions to the issues of authorship of works created by artificial intelligence, violation of author’s rights, and integrity in case of full or partial borrowing of a work to generate a new work by artificial intelligence. The role of NFT technologies in solving the problem of preserving the author’s moral rights is defined.

Scientific novelty: the work fills a gap in research on the relationship between copyright and technological development. It identifies and evaluates the innovations in the purpose and content of the author’s moral rights, caused by the processes of digitalization, and attempts to solve the problem of the author’s rights compliance with technological progress.

Practical significance: the obtained results may serve as a conceptual basis for further development and improvement of national legislation and international legal regulation in the field of copyright protection, transformation of the objectives, role and place of the author’s moral rights in the digital environment.

Objective: to search for conceptual issues, features and prospects of development of tax law principles and tax obligation institute in the context of modern digitalization trends.

Methods: the study is based on a set of general legal (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction) and special-legal (formal-legal, comparativelegal) methods of cognition.

Results: the main features of tax law principles characterizing their digital development were defined, namely: the expansion of the list of such principles and the changes in their content, predominantly at the level of institutional principles of taxation. A conclusion is made that in the digital era the tax law principles retain their theoretical significance as the most important category of the relevant science. The author states that the digital transformation of the institutional principle of tax fulfillment independence takes place mainly in the following directions: firstly, the range of taxpayers is expanded, in respect of which the duty to calculate tax can be imposed on a tax authority; secondly, the mechanism of the tax obligation execution is changed, among other things, by increasing the tax obligations of state authorities and credit organizations.

Scientific novelty: the paper assesses the approaches used in the scientific literature and normative-legal framework related to transformation of the taxation principles due to the intensive use of information and communication technologies in tax relations. The author also analyzed the digital transformation of the principles of tax obligation as one of the main tax-legal institutions.

Practical significance: is due to the lagging pace of tax legislation development in the Russian Federation compared to the objective processes of creation and application of new information and communication technologies in tax relations and adjacent spheres. The main provisions and conclusions of the study can be used as a basis to improve the tax legislation, as they develop knowledge about new tax law institutions – professional income tax, tax monitoring, single tax payment, and automated simplified taxation system.

Objective: To look at the fintech regulatory policy and regulatory system in the Greater Bay Area through the lens of the Trilemma of Innovation doctrine in order to identify the applicability and extrapolation of existing legal models in the zone of accelerated economic and innovation development in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.

Methods: The article is based on the comparative legal research of the regulation regarding models, existing within the regulatory framework for fintech. For that matter we conduct a generalization, introducing the classification of methods and systems that, in our opinion, can be recognized as the Lego-like systems of instruments.

Results: The research evaluates difficulties that may be faced by the participants within GBA on the way of legal harmonization regarding fintech. Special attention is paid to Hong Kong SAR, being one of the bestknown examples of successful fintech regulation, and to comparing fintech regulation in Mainland China and in SAR (Macau, in particular). The author states that the last amendments to the financial law of Macau SAR also add an element of uncertainty, even though they aim to develop the situation within the framework. The author compares a technocratic approach, according to which fintech regulation is completely national (created only for the domestic market and reflects its structure) and traditional approach to regulation, a part of which is the Trilemma of Innovation. The latter implies the possibility of over-national (international) standardization, including in the form of soft law, which may eliminate the difference in understanding the fintech characteristics, its concepts and scope. Besides, the author analyses the correlation between the concepts of financial regulatory system and financial system of fintech regulation, extrapolation of the existing regulatory framework to the developing market of innovative technological solutions and their various models. The author highlights the regulatory response method, changing during the fintech market evolution, and applied, as a rule, together with other approaches.

Scientific novelty: the article presents a comprehensive review of the different systems of fintech legal regulation in the Guangdong – Hong Kong – Macau Greater Bay Area, whose unique experience demonstrates various trajectories of the fintech market development in southern China within the “One Country – Two Systems” concept.

Practical significance: the main conclusions and proposals resulting from the study are of significant interest for further research, regulatory policy and fintech regulatory system, as Mainland China and the special administrative regions of the Greater Bay Area use different approaches and methods of legal response that have no analogues in the modern world.

Objective: based on the analysis of financial and legal policy of certain jurisdictions, to determine the initial prospects of financial and legal development of social relations in metaverse using digital currencies.

Methods: the research is based on the system of cognitive tools: first of all, formal-legal, comparative-legal, statistical methods, and the method of legal forecasting, which help to interpret the legal norms and financiallegal policy of various jurisdictions, assess the degree of current development of legislation on regulation of technologies in virtual worlds, and formulate ideas about the financial-legal regulation of public relations using digital currencies in the metaverse.

Results: the study reveals that modern legislation on metaverses is at the initial stage of its formation, as in developed jurisdictions metaverse is still considered only as a future technology. The author shows the degree of popularity of the metaverse first prototypes and the growing attention of some states to the metaverse in order to develop their socioeconomic potential and consolidate international leadership in digital development. The paper points out the shortcomings of the metaverse definitions developed in doctrine and practice, and long proposes the author’s definition. It is argued that in order to fully integrate metaverse technology into a certain country, whose policy is focused on achieving (maintaining) a high rating in terms of the economy digital transformation, it is necessary to determine the currency that will be legitimately used in the metaverse in future. A conclusion is made that it is necessary to plan financial and legal policy in this area, which will largely depend on the legal regime of cryptocurrency in a particular country. It is argued that further development of the metaverse concept in Russia will depend on the results of testing the digital ruble.

Scientific novelty: the paper is one of the first devoted to the convergence of metaverse and financial law, which proposes a concept for establishing full-fledged legality of digital currency in the metaverse depending on the attitude of a particular country to decentralized finance. Along with popular definitions formulated in doctrine and practice, the author presents their own interpretation of the metaverse, indicating its essential features.

Practical significance: the conclusions and proposals obtained can be used to improve the mechanisms of financial and legal regulation of social relations under the emerging metaverse concept. The presented ideas are important for further research of various financial and legal aspects of metaverses’ development and functioning.

Objective: To develop a mapping of studies on innovation and digital transformation in the justice sector, publishes from 2001 to 2022. Five research questions were defined: 1) How to define innovation and digital transformation introduced in the justice sector? 2) What types of innovations and digital transformations are implemented in the justice sector? 3) What are the objectives of introducing innovation and digital transformation in the justice sector? 4) What are the antecedents that influence the process of innovation and digital transformation in the justice sector? 5) What are the results of the innovation and digital transformation process in the justice sector?

Methods: The systematic review of sources (scientific articles, conference 

proceedings, monographs and institutional documents) presented in this paper was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol. Selected by “research field”, “topic”, “research design”, “year of publication” and the keywords “public administration”, “public sector”, “e-justice”, “digital transformation”, and “innovation”, the sources were analyzed and evaluated according to five main aspects: (1) definition of innovation; (2) types of innovation; (3) objectives of innovation; (4) antecedents of innovation; and (5) results of innovation.

Results: The heuristic model for studying innovation in the public sector developed by Vries et al. (2015) was adapted and applied to the research field of justice. The adaptation of the heuristic model allowed forming the following areas of analysis: contextual antecedents in justice; institutional antecedents in justice; characteristics of innovation and digital transformation in justice; individual antecedents in justice; types of innovation and digital transformation in justice; results of the process of innovation and digital transformation in justice.

Scientific novelty: a comprehensive review of the literature in the field of innovation and digital transformation in justice is presented by adapting the approach to conducting systematic studies of the literature in the social sciences. It helped to identify gaps and define directions for further research in the given field, including the activation of comparative legal research, expansion of the methodological base, reliance on the theories of public administration, etc.

Practical significance: the obtained results allow forming a heuristic map of innovation and digital transformation in justice, create antecedents (contextual, institutional and individual) and the basis for future empirical research in the field of justice, analysis, evaluation and improvement of public policy in the field of innovation and digital transformation in this area.