Legal culture and legal consciousness: definition of concepts, their connection, signs and factors

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:44

An obligatory part of social life is legal culture, and legal consciousness arises only if the totality of its social phenomena, both material and spiritual, is present. As an object of study, legal culture is studied by culturologists, and it is also of great importance in the theory of law, since it contains both legal and non-legal components.

Objects of public law

Since law exists in society, both legal culture and legal consciousness must be present, only then the state of social institutions becomes qualitative. This is not just a phenomenon of social life in the aggregate, it is a characteristic of the level of development and an indicator of the effectiveness of the entire legal system.

And legal theory, and legal practice, and all the achievements, all the results of the legal sphere, the value of legal postulates - all this is determinedthe presence and level of development of legal culture and legal consciousness.

Structure

There are a variety of interpretations and interpretations of these terms. Legal culture and legal consciousness are multilevel phenomena, consisting of many purely qualitative assessments. At the same time, the following institutions work: current legislation, that is, positive law, developed legal relations, law and order and legality, unhindered implementation of law.

This also includes the work of the state apparatus, jurisprudence, education, literature, helping to carry out high-quality individual legal acts, and much more - this list will probably always be open. The main thing is to understand that it is legal consciousness that prevails in each of the points, and legal culture and legal education raise its quality level in every possible way.

Leveling

Depending on how qualitatively legal consciousness develops, legal culture and legal education are manifested at the individual level, that is, this is something that is inherent in an individual.

The next level is corporate when these provisions are considered in a separate team.

Following is the general level of legal consciousness, legal and political culture is manifested in one way or another in the whole society, where these phenomena cannot but get political overtones.

The final level - the highest - universal, or civilizational, it includes all of the above already inon a global scale. Such is the structure of legal consciousness. Legal culture should be present wherever a person appears, manifesting itself in accordance with the conditions that prevailed when he appeared.

Form of social consciousness

The formation of legal consciousness and legal culture occurs as an ideal reflection of such phenomena in the human mind. They always know exactly how to live correctly, how events should develop, and also what should be the reaction to the result. However, nothing is perfect in real life, and therefore legal culture, legal consciousness, legal education will always have a huge space for development.

This is exactly what applies to any kind of legal culture: to everyday, to professional (legal), to scientific (doctrinal) - it will always be not only possible, but also necessary to grow and improve the quality of familiar legal phenomena in the minds of people. This reality is subjective, although it fills any moment of social life and at any level as a representation of an individual person or a whole group of people, as well as the whole society about the objective right that existed before, exists at the moment and should always continue to exist.

Ideology and psychology

In the structure of consciousness, two interrelated components interact - psychology and ideology, to put it briefly. Legal consciousness and legal culture entirely depend on the level of their development. Ideology includes accumulated legal knowledge, concepts,ideas, ideas and theories, that is, this is an understanding of law, its rational level, which is formed in the process of comprehension, intellectual processing of the information received.

Psychology - assessment of phenomena from the emotional, sensual side, this necessarily includes moods, experiences, stereotypes, habits, that is, emotions and feelings. This level is intuitive, spontaneous, which is not controlled by the mind. From the point of view of psychology, legal consciousness and legal culture, their correlation most of all influence the choice of a behavior model - whether it will be lawful or not. In any case, each person can perceive the right not only with reason, with reason - intellectually, but above all emotionally, as if feeling and feeling its impact.

Legal Education

Legal information is necessarily passed down from generation to generation: it is both experience and knowledge about the law. And this is necessarily an integral part of personality education and general upbringing. The goal pursued is always the same - the improvement of legal education, and then the safety culture will also be at its best. A conscious desire for lawful behavior is instilled in each individual person in order to make the right choice of a behavior model and thereby improve the general state of law and order and the rule of law.

The very first information about how to behave well and how badly, a person receives in the family and at a very early age. That is, from an early age, he, albeit unconsciously, gets acquainted with the legal culture. Legal education of the individual morecarried out with the involvement of other entities, including the state. This is a kindergarten, a school, professional educational institutions, various social associations, a team.

The state is very interested in improving legal knowledge and the general culture of society, and therefore legal propaganda is present everywhere, spreading among the population through a variety of information media. Science and professional legal support make a particularly large contribution.

Deformation of legal consciousness

Legal conscience quite often exists in a deformed state for individual citizens. For example, quite often there is a negative attitude towards civil law, when a person denies its social value, that is, consciously chooses a model of unlawful behavior. This is legal nihilism.

There is also an opposite attitude towards law, when a citizen exaggerates its role in public life, absolutizes it. And such manifestations are no less unpleasant and harmful to the normal course of everyday phenomena in society, since legal regulation cannot be applied everywhere. It's practically a disease called legal fetishism.

The third type of deformation of the legal consciousness is the lack of legal education. This is legal infantilism, when the role of law is not sufficiently appreciated and, in general, citizens do not know the rights - neither their own nor those of others. The level of legal awareness should generally coincide with the level of legal culture on any scale - both individual andcorporate, social and civilizational.

Assessment of the level of legal consciousness

First of all, legal awareness is the embodiment of the behavior of subjects, only in this way it is possible to evaluate and characterize its level in practice. All the flaws in the legal attitudes of both an individual and society as a whole are revealed only when theoretical attitudes are transferred to a practical environment.

The realization of legal consciousness occurs in the natural conditions of the existing legal culture, being a necessary element of it and reflected in all its other components, as if being objectified in them. The nature of legal consciousness is studied by analyzing the specifics through its verbal and real external forms. Legal reality lends itself quite easily to such an analysis.

Activity approach

To define the concept of legal culture, scientific literature uses this term. The activity approach is based on attention to the external side of events that require an assessment of the level of legal culture. This is, first of all, the activity and its results, considered from the point of view of legal relations. The structure of legal culture includes law and legal relations, legal institutions that consider legal behavior and evaluate legal consciousness.

The meaning of legal culture can be considered in a narrow sense and in a broad one, but it is always a legal activity, that is, legal institutions participate in it, legal norms and principles apply, a creative approach is applied to law enforcementactivities of the individual, groups and society as a whole. These are informational, political, and social components that make up the essence of legal culture.

Functions of legal culture

The orderly nature of social relations guarantees the development of principles, norms, patterns of behavior, as well as legal models. This is the regulatory function of legal culture. In order for society to be dominated by constitutionality, law and order and, as a result, the security of the individual and society has increased, it is necessary to ensure this by creating a variety of legal means, and this is precisely what is done with the help of the protective function of legal culture.

To analyze the development of state legal relations with all their trends and patterns, it is necessary to determine the most effective mechanisms for the implementation of legal goals and the solution of legal problems. This is what the prognostic function embodies, analyzing the effectiveness and quality of legal culture in the present and projecting its development in the future. The implementation of legal policy has many forms, and the fourth - law-transforming - function reflects just such a variety of reforms aimed at legal and social progress in society.

Educational function

This is a purposeful process carried out by the state and non-state bodies, organizations, institutions, as well as individual citizens, and it is aimed at the formation of legal consciousness. This activity includes not only the studyrules and regulations, but also general legal propaganda, education, as well as legal practice, self-education and self-education.

The educational function of legal culture forms mature legal ideas, conviction in the importance and necessity of active social legal behavior and intolerance to violations and abuses of law. This is how the rule of law, the legal system and statehood are created - through values and preferences based on legal culture, with the formation of the social responsibility of each citizen.

Values of legal culture

Each social system - economic, political, legal - has its own values, without which its functioning is impossible. The content of these values is different, but they all closely interact with each other, since they are endowed with many common and completely universal properties. These values are filled with other areas of culture - religious and moral, political and economic, scientific and educational. This is how a spiritual social order is created, a system of moral coordinates is organized.

The majority of the population should have a high level of legal culture. Thus, in Russia the people are much more responsible and just than their representatives in the state apparatus and their reformist forces. Only thanks to this, the relative order in the country is preserved.

Combining signs of legal culture

Lawmaking is a legal activity that forms andaccepting national values, the results of which are always visible to every individual. The norms of behavior and their conscious choice characterize the universality of the nature of the values of the legal culture of a given society. Here the criterion is the significance in the public good of legal reforms that are being tested and implemented.

Many areas of culture put social values at the head of the entire sign system of legal relations, and legal culture cannot function otherwise. Only practical activity can be an indicator of the value of this system, since theoretical information does not implement even the simplest communicative functions to the necessary extent.