Application of Law

activity of state bodies or officials by which, in legal acts promulgated on the basis of and in execution of statutes, edicts, and other normative acts, these bodies or officials establish, amend, and abolish rights and duties of state bodies, public organizations, officials, and individual citizens or resolve questions of applying sanctions for violation of legal norms. The process of applying the law includes establishing the factual circumstances of the case with objective reliability, selecting the legal norm to be applied in the given instance, interpreting the meaning of the legal norm selected, and issuing an instrument on the application of the legal norm addressed to the person or organization in question. In the USSR, application of the law is a legal form by which state bodies carry out their functions of managing political and administrative affairs (for example, acts on the appointment or removal of officials), managing the economy (for example, acts establishing plan assignments), and administering justice (for example, the decisions and verdicts of courts).