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This article presents the difference between legal norms and legal principles. The author's viewpoint is based on the differentiation between regulatory, systemic and teleological legal attitudes in the legal order of a state of law (Rechtsstaat). The conceptual framework of legal principles entails constituent laws and different areas of a legal order. Unlike legal norms (as subject-specific regulating legal attitudes) and legal standards (as the most general legal attitudes), legal principles are radiating teleological legal attitudes. Moreover, being the result of systemic and teleological concretisation of written law, legal principles as basic teleological legal attitudes are shaped as bundles of teleological legal attitudes and legal conceptions. In the order of a legal state, legal principles have a circular flow in the operation of the legal order, which is determined by the complementary roles of the institutional order of public authority, the institutional order of state authority, and the institutional order of a territorial community. It necessarily brings to light the difference between the fundamental legal principles of a legal order and the legal principles governing different areas of a legal order. This article analyzes the aspects of systemic and teleological understanding of legal principles, particularly considering the distinctive nature of legal principles as sources of law. Legal principles are also viewed as canons directly developed in jurisprudence, within the framework of the "internal legal system" based on legal forms.

Considering that the expansion of legal regulation and multiplication of legal norms in the legal order of the Republic of Serbia have engendered over two hundred (substantive and procedural) legislative acts referring to the application of the General Administrative Procedure Act (GAPA), there is no general law in the Serbian legal order that could be compared to the GAPA in terms of correlation with other laws. Yet, in our judicature and legal science, there are no clear criteria for regulating the relationship between the GAPA and other (subject-specific) legislative acts referring to the application of the GAPA provisions. The relationship between the GAPA and subject-specific legislative acts may be based on the regime of legal subordination and the regime of legal referral. It further leads to the distinction between subsidiary and analoguous application of the general law, which is the author's original standpoint. Analogous application entails the application of the general law in accordance with the nature of the relationship between the legal procedure rules and the subject matter of legal regulation, whereas subsidiary application entails the application of the general law as a whole in all matters which are not regulated by a subject-specific law. In view of the obligation to harmonize subject-specific legislative acts with the GAPA, the author is of the opinion that such harmonization cannot be put into effect without amending the GAPA. Therefore, the GAPA provisions shall: (1) embody the distinction between subsidiary and analogous application of the GAPA, and (2) strengthen the direct application of the GAPA in administrative matters.

Expropriation as a legal institute is both narrower and broader than expropriation in a formal sense (formal expropriation). Expropriation in a formal sense implies a due legal process of revoking or restricting the ownership right in a particular legal case by the operation of the law. Formal expropriation generates the establishment of various legal institutes, one of which is expropriation in a material sense. On the other hand, expropriation as a legal institute emerges outside the scope of formal expropriation), which occurs within the framework of restricting one's private ownership, as a result of direct statutory regulation (legislation) in particular areas of the legal order, and a result of the legal regulation in particular cases in judicial and other legal proceedings. Expropriation in a material sense exists only in cases where the transformation of private ownership into public ownership occurs through expropriation in a formal sense, for the purpose of achieving a specifically designated general interest, including the possibility of return to the previous state of affairs (de-expropriation). De-expropriation takes place at the request of the former owner if it is established that the intended purpose of expropriation has not been achieved. In effect, the possibility of de-expropriation is the differentia specifica that separates expropriation in a material sense from other legal institutes related to expropriation in a formal sense, as well as from quasi-expropriation and other forms of revoking and restricting the private ownership right under the legal authority of the state.