The general spin structure of the relativistic nucleon wave function in the
3q-model is found. it contains 16 spin components, in contrast to the 8 al
ready known. This follows from the fact that in a many-body system parity c
onservation does not reduce the number of components. The explicitly covari
ant form of the wave function automatically takes into account the relativi
stic spin rotations, without introducing any Melosh rotation matrices. It a
lso reduces the calculations to the standard routine of the Dirac matrices
and of the trace techniques. In examples of the proton magnetic moment and
of the axial nucleon form factor, with a particular wave function, we repro
duce the results of the standard approach. Calculations beyond the standard
assumptions give different results. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.