Privilege and Benefit as Legal Categories: Issues of Correlation
Relevance. The article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of "privilege" as a legal category. The conceptual and categorical apparatus of jurisprudence includes a number of concepts that define exceptions to the general rule - the principle of legal equality. The system-forming category defining the right of a subject to use an additional right is the concept of "legal advantage". The conceptual range of this category includes the concepts: "legal privilege", "legal privilege", "legal immunity", etc. The most controversial, causing ambiguous assessments and definitions, is the concept of "privilege", the negative meaning of which is historically associated with a phenomenon that reflected social inequality. The origin of the principle of equality is associated with the gradual rejection of systemic privileges (class, racial, sexual). The purpose of the study is a theoretical, legal and historical analysis of the category of "legal privilege" based on comparison with the concept of "legal privilege". The research objectives include: comparison of the legal concepts of "privilege" and "privilege", analysis of their genesis, identification of similarities and differences. The methodology of the article included methods traditionally used in conducting theoretical and legal research: general scientific (dialectical, logical, system-structural; private scientific (historical, statistical, axiological) and special (comparative legal and formal legal). Results. The conducted research has shown that legal benefits and privileges initially act as legitimate regulatory exceptions to the general legal principle of equality, which does not indicate their legal identity. Conclusion. The evolution of privileges followed the path of gradual abandonment of systemic advantages to privileges based mainly on official status. Benefits were originally intended to alleviate the situation of the socially unprotected population, their functional role has expanded over time, but has not changed significantly.