The purpose of the article is to verify the thesis on the need to include issues of the territory of the state in the subject of legal regulation of the constitution. At the same time, the legal regulation of the territory and the territorial structure is distinguished. The first is the consolidation of territorial principles, characteristics and composition of the territory. The second category includes issues of autonomy, administrative–territorial structure, and local self-government (for unitary states). The study was conducted using the example of East Asian countries: Mongolia, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea, and Japan. The choice of the region is due to the contrasting characteristics of the territories of these states (in terms of area, contiguity with the territories of other states, population density) and the presence of territorial conflicts between them. It is also important that all these countries have a unitary form of government. According to the results of a comparative legal study, it was revealed that the peculiarities of the territory do not affect its regulation in the constitution of the state. Territorial conflict, on the contrary, is usually reflected in the constitutional text in the form of a political declaration. In all East Asian countries, the constitutions pay little attention to the regulation of territory, and in two constitutions the norms on territory and territorial structure are completely absent. This result indicates that the territory is not a mandatory element of constitutional regulation. The author believes that the lack of constitutional regulation contradicts the importance that the territory has for the state. The revealed tendency to pay little attention to territorial issues is explained by understanding the territory as a part of a physical space that cannot be the object of legal regulation. It is concluded that it is necessary to develop a different legal understanding of the territory of the state.

territory of the state, territorial conflict, territorial integrity, constitution, subject of constitutional regulation, physical territory

Praskova Svetlana Vasil’evna – Candidate of Juridical Sciences, Associate Professor, Senior Researcher, Scientific Research Institute, Baikal State University (11, Lenin st., Irkutsk, 664003, Russian Federation), RSCI Author ID: 414497, ORCID: 0000-0003-4518-3659, Researcher ID: AAC-8601-2020, e-mail: savap@mail.ru

Praskova S. V. Konstitucionnoe regulirovanie territorii v stranah Vostochnoj Azii: sravnitel'no-pravovoe issledovanie [Constitutional regulation of the territory in East Asian countries: comparative legal research] Sibirskij yuridicheskij vestnik [Siberian Law Herald]. 2025, no 3(110), pp. 10–18. – DOI 10.26516/2071-8136.2025.3.10 (in Russian)

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