Legal culture

Depending on the carrier of legal culture, there are three types of it [1] :
-legal culture of society;
legal personality culture;
legal group culture.

According to the ideas of scientists Yu.N. Dmitrienko and I.V. Dmitrienko, tested in official studies and publications, types of legal culture have significant and priority sources of “cycles of social activity of legal consciousness”, which reasonably interpret further conditions and opportunities for the successful study of various architectonics of legal culture in its most popular aspects.

The legal culture of society

The legal culture of society is a part of the general culture, which is a system of values ​​accumulated by mankind in the field of law and related to the legal reality of this society: the level of legal awareness, the rule of law and order, the state of legislation, the state of legal practice, etc. A high level of legal culture is an indicator of legal progress. The culture of society is the result of the social and legal activity of individuals, collectives and other legal entities; it serves as a starting point, the basis for this kind of activity and, in general, for the legal culture of the individual.

Legal culture of an individual

This is due to the legal culture of society, the degree and nature of the progressive legal development of the individual, ensuring its legitimate activities.
The legal culture of the individual involves:
1. legal knowledge, legal information. Awareness has been and remains an important channel for the formation of a legally mature personality (intellectual cut);
2. the transformation of accumulated information and legal knowledge into legal beliefs, habits of lawful behavior (emotional and psychological cut);
3. willingness to act, guided by this legal knowledge and legal convictions, that is, to act lawfully - in accordance with the law: use your rights, fulfill obligations, comply with prohibitions, and also be able to assert your rights in case of violation (behavioral cut).

The legal culture of the individual characterizes the level of legal socialization of a member of society, the degree of assimilation and use by him of the legal principles of state and social life, the Constitution and other laws. The legal culture of an individual means not only knowledge and understanding of law, but also legal judgments about it as a social value, and most importantly, active work to implement it, to strengthen law and order. In other words, the legal culture of the individual is its positive legal consciousness in action. It includes the transformation by a person of his abilities and social qualities based on legal experience.

Group Legal Culture

In the scientific literature, there is often an indication also of the third type of legal culture - the legal culture of a social group, characterized by the level of legal awareness of this social group, as well as the level of its actual implementation of the requirements of existing law. However, given that the characteristic of the legal culture of society as a whole coincides with the characteristic of the legal culture of a social group, it is advisable to isolate the legal culture of a social group from the legal culture of a society directly when studying a specific social group, and not the legal culture as such.

Legal culture consists of a number of interrelated elements :

The level of legal awareness and legal activity of citizens

This element is expressed in the degree of assimilation (expression of knowledge and understanding ) of rights by citizens, officials, focus on compliance with prohibitions , use of rights , fulfillment of duties . Each subject is called upon to: comprehend that law is a value in the field of public relations ; know the law , understand its meaning , be able to interpret certain provisions of the law , find out its purpose, determine the scope; be able to apply the acquired legal knowledge in practice, use the law to protect their rights , freedoms and legitimate interests ; Be able to behave in difficult legal situations , etc.

The level (volume) of knowledge of law depends on whether the citizen is a professional lawyer , employee of the law-making or law enforcement sphere, or is he engaged in other activities.

A professional lawyer needs a thorough knowledge of legal requirements . A citizen - not a lawyer - uses the minimum legal knowledge that is required for his work, behavior in everyday life, in his family. This is, first of all, knowledge of the principles of law , the basic norms of constitutional law ( law and freedoms , the electoral system, etc.), labor , family , civil , business law , understanding of the unity of rights and obligations , a responsible attitude to the implementation of both. The citizen should be generally aware of the rules that stipulate and regulate legal liability and the general procedure for bringing to it, the age from which legal and, above all, criminal liability comes, for merchants - civil liability .

There is such a phenomenon of legal culture as the presumption of knowledge of the law , which means an assumption (convention) of knowledge by a person of the law , adopted with a view to the normal functioning of the entire legal system and acting as an indispensable requirement of legal culture. Therefore, every citizen should be interested in a legal culture. The presence of even extensive legal knowledge among citizens and officials does not yet indicate a high level of legal culture, because it is necessary not only to know the law , but also to show legal activity .

Status of legal practice

• the level of lawmaking activity and the state of legislation - is expressed in the perfection of the content and form of regulatory legal acts , in their quality, reasonableness, consistency, culture of legal texts , that is, in the legal technique for the preparation, adoption and publication of regulatory legal acts , and the resolution of procedural legislative issues. All this taken together is an indicator of the level of law - making (including legislative) culture ;
• the level of judicial , law enforcement activity and the state of law enforcement practice - is expressed as the work of law enforcement , judicial , law enforcement and other bodies, which is an indicator of the law enforcement culture of officials , their professional knowledge of the law , well-established work to consider legal issues and bring them to full legal resolution .

Legal practice is a legal activity on the adoption, interpretation , application of legal requirements , taken in unity with the accumulated social and legal experience.

Law enforcement , judicial , investigative , prosecutorial supervision , arbitration , notarial and other types of legal practice are specific proceedings, suitably organized and planned. Its subjects are professional lawyers . Their activities are an indicator of the level of law enforcement culture .

• The regime of legality and law and order is the state of the actual streamlining of public relations regulated by legal means, the content of which is the totality of lawful actions of legal entities . The strength of the rule of law depends on the state of legality , without which a legal culture is impossible. Conviction of the need to comply with legal requirements and their observance is the basis of the rule of law and order .

All of these elements of legal culture are those legal phenomena that are part of the legal system of society.

In everyday discussions about the problem of legal culture, one can often come across statements that there is no legal culture in Russia, that legal culture is inherent only in a society with a developed legal state.

It is impossible to agree with this from the perspective of science. Legal culture, as already noted earlier, is not something isolated, it, being part of the culture as a whole, is organically interwoven with the latter, and, therefore, is inherent to one degree or another both in society as a whole and in individuals. Researcher A. Ratinov confirms my words in this case. He notes that “in none of the numerous studies of different age groups, including adolescents, there was not a single test subject who did not have certain legal ideas, evaluative attitudes to legal phenomena life, etc. "

Ratinov also writes: “The assimilation of legal values, legal norms, standards of legal behavior continues throughout life. Even at a very young age, a person with “mother’s milk” absorbs the first elements of a legal culture. He acquires skills and assimilates standards of normative behavior, receives the first legal ideas from fairy tales, in role-playing games he acquires concepts about the functions of law and its representatives, and gradually forms, although a primitive, childish, but his own picture of legal life. With age, with the expansion of the circle of communication, the complexity of activities and the roles performed, intensive enrichment and development of this, as well as other, spheres of consciousness takes place. ”

In support of "the assimilation of legal values, legal norms, standards of legal behavior" in early childhood, it is enough to cite just one quote:

As the king-father heard
What the messenger told him
In anger he began to wonder
And he wanted to hang a messenger;
But, softened this time,
He gave the messenger the following order:
"Wait for the king to return
For a legal decision. ”
A messenger rides with a letter,
And he finally arrived.
And the weaver with the cook,
With the sibling Baba Babarikha,
They tell him to rob him;
Dopiana messenger is watered
And in his empty bag
They put another letter -
And brought a drunken messenger
On the same day, the order is:
“The king tells his boyars
Wasting no time
And the queen and the offspring
Secretly throw into the abyss of water. "
Nothing to do: boyars,
Squeezing about the sovereign
And the young queen
A crowd came to her bedroom.
They announced the king’s will -
Her son and evil share,
Read aloud the decree
And the queen at that very hour
They put me in a barrel with my son,
Pitched, rolled
And let into Okyan -
So ordered de Tsar Saltan.

(A. S. Pushkin “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”)

Thus, neither the individual nor society as a whole can be deprived of a legal culture. But it can be very low.

Having determined the indispensable presence of a legal culture in society, one should turn to its role in it. In general, the role of the legal culture of society is not much different from the role of culture in general. It is more interesting in this regard to turn to the legal culture of the individual.

So, in particular, there is an opinion that “contrary to ordinary perception, neither positive nor negative sanctions alone can ensure the fulfillment of due and abstinence from forbidden behavior, because between behavior and authorization there is no mechanical connection such as“ stimulus - reaction ”. You need to keep in mind the relatively autonomous nature of the value-normative sphere of the personality, its specific content, the nature of the acquired values, norms, attitudes and orientations that mediate different aspects of social reality, and in particular its legal sphere. Therefore, the effectiveness of sanctions depends both on their objective nature (significance) and, to a greater extent, on their subjective meaning. ”

In other words, studies show that a person does not commit unlawful acts to a greater extent, not because he foresees an appropriate punishment, namely because he considers this act unworthy, dangerous, contrary to life principles, value system, etc. this, in fact, manifests the relatively autonomous nature of the value-normative sphere of the individual.

A somewhat similar idea was expressed by A. I. Ekimov and D. I. Lukovskaya: “Universal knowledge of laws, as was repeatedly noted in socialist legal literature, is a fiction ... For example, there is no need for universal knowledge of qualifying features that distinguish theft from robbery or robbery. Another thing is important: that everyone clearly understands the inadmissibility of embezzlement of personal, state or public property or an encroachment on the identity of another person. ”It follows that the legal culture plays a much greater role in regulating social relations and stimulating lawful behavior than the number of prohibitions contained in the norms of law or the severity punishment for their violation.

For legitimate behavior in most cases, it is sufficient for the individual to assimilate social values ​​and general legal principles.

Assessing the important role of legal culture in the regulation of social behavior, it is not difficult to grasp its role in countering social ailments.

It becomes obvious that if the goal is, for example, to reduce crime, the conclusion inevitably suggests the need, first of all, to increase the level of legal culture, instilling respect for social norms and values. (It should be noted that supporters of toughening punishments as a method of combating crime have recently intensified. Another confirmation that such a method has no scientific basis is contained in the above quotes. In addition, the issue of toughening sentences is a very delicate question. in the field of criminology and other legal sciences (including, it should be considered from the point of view of legal culture), but not in the plane of emotional, philistine assessments.)

It is also important to note the role of legal culture in the struggle for subjective rights. The high legal culture of the individual determines intolerance to any violations of law and order in general, including the violation of the subjective rights of citizens.

Thus, the legal culture carries not only the function of accumulation and inheritance of legal values, but also, through the subjectivization of legal values, in itself, along with the rule of law, acts as an important regulator of social relations.

According to many prominent researchers, Orthodoxy played a significant role in the formation of the domestic legal culture.

So, in particular, the representative of the Slavophil movement, K.S. Aksakov, in his note “On the Internal State of Russia” (1855) writes: “Russia never enriched the law, did not believe in its perfection, did not demand perfection from it,” she “ looked at him as a matter of secondary importance, considering faith and the salvation of the soul as the primary matter. ”

The same peculiarity of Russian legal culture is noted by M. B. Smolensky: “An appeal to the history of the development of Russian society makes it possible to identify its features that are clearly reflected in the legal culture.” So one of the features, according to Smolensky, is: “intolerance, a clearly neglectful attitude to the law with no less obvious respect for the“ order. ”P. I. Novgorodtsev in his article“ On the Original Elements of Russian Philosophy of Law ”writes that the peculiarity of the Russian spirit in his understanding of life and history, law and the state - it’s nothing more than the perfect recognition and approval of the foundations of the Christian religion, the refusal to implement the perfect legal status and statehood, while recognizing F. Dostoevsky as a priority in the wording and the deepest foundations of Russian philosophy of law, he, in particular, sets out his point of view on social progress, which is characterized not by the expectation of a coming paradise on earth, not by the desire to achieve a carefree calm life and not by faith in the endless progress of mankind, but is guided by the consciousness of the inevitable end of the world and especially the conviction in the decline of all human affairs, based on the desire to achieve an earthly paradise and settle down without God, only by the power of the human mind.

The negative side of this feature is indicated by prof. OV Martyshin : “Faith, truth, justice were placed above the law by religious consciousness, which in its own way is true, but at the same time it can easily lead to legal nihilism, the desire to act on the basis of the highest criteria and considerations in the field where they should reign laws".

The Soviet period, in fact, brought little to the legal culture of the country. “No matter how qualitatively the Soviet legal system differs from the pre-revolutionary one, due to the fact that it embodied the principle of the dictatorship of one party, which grew almost a quarter century into the actual dictatorship of one of its leaders, in practice the law in Soviet Russia took as much a modest place, as in pre-revolutionary Russia. ” Speaking about the Soviet period, one can state the clear priority of ideology, socialist morality over law in the matter of regulating social relations. In modern Russia, at the theoretical level, two opposing views on legal culture have been outlined.

On the one hand, liberalization of the legislation has been observed, for many years there has been a direction in the direction of building the rule of law, on the other hand, soil-growing moods are gaining strength. So, in particular, A.G. Dugin , speaking on behalf of Russian Eurasianism, believes that a rule of law Western model is alien to the nature of Russia, that “national jurisprudence must abruptly and firmly refuse to copy the legal theories of the West”, “it’s not important, the truth is the state of truth. ” It should be noted that in practice, directly in the legislation, the principle of liberalism dominates. The basic law of Russia, the Constitution of the Russian Federation, is not without reason called one of the most liberal in the world.

In everyday life, it is necessary to note the widespread legal nihilism, expressed, like many centuries ago, in a disrespectful, disdainful attitude to law. From the point of view of reasons, this is a consequence of legal ignorance, backwardness and legal lack of education of the bulk of the population. In addition, in this regard, one should not forget about the historical features of the legal culture in Russia.

As an assumption explaining the current state of affairs in the legal culture, one can point to the legacy of the Soviet system. In conditions of prolonged suppression of rights and freedoms, an individual, in order to realize his needs, vital interests, is forced to look for ways to circumvent the law, "deceive the boss."

Based on the foregoing, it can be stated that despite a rather high, although far from perfect, level of development of legislation that embodies progressive liberal values, the general level of legal culture of the population remains extremely low. And the main problem remains the lack of awareness of law as the most important social value.

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