The Issue of Legal Gaps in the Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Bulgaria

1. The Bulgarian legal system allows for gaps in the law. According to Art. 46, para 1 of the Normative Acts Law (NAL), when a normative act has gaps, not-provided-for cases are regulated by the provisions, pertaining to similar cases, if that complies with the aim of the act; or, lacking such provisions, by the basic principles of law in the Republic of Bulgaria. The text is phrased as a general prescription, which gives a specific formula for selfdevelopment of the law. Taking into consideration its content, on one hand, and the legal technique used, on the other hand, we can draw two basic conclusions on the significance and the role of this provision. Firstly, regarding the fact that, in principle, it allows for normative acts to have gaps, as well as to lack rules (norms) on certain social relations. Besides, it is significant that, when the legislator acknowledges such a possibility, they do it fully in the spirit of positivism, i.e. the issue of the lacking legal rule is decided exclusively within the framework of legislation and on the premise that positive law, through its principles, constitutes an accomplished and all-encompassing system, which can give an answer to any specific problem. Next, it is obvious that the text does not aim at giving a definition, but, rather, at showing what is to be done, when it is established that the law has gaps. The definition of “legal gaps” still awaits clarification in legal theory. Bulgarian legal literature presents no unanimous opinion as to what “legal gaps” means. To some, “legal gap” means the lack of a definite legal rule for the regulation of certain relations. Others believe that “legal gaps” should be seen as the compete absence of a legal rule, i.e., the law has no answer to a certain issue either by direct application or by analogy, nor is there any exclusive rule for the mediated regulation of the case, either.