3. Legal theory Theory of law. Along with the philosophy of law in the world of scientific disciplines that have emerged in connection with the general scientific development of legal problems, the general theory of law (another area of ​​general theoretical legal

Chapter 4. Legal ontology 1. Man as a legal being The considered definitions of the essence and concept of law in its distinction and coincidence with the law make it possible to characterize law from the point of view of ontology (the doctrine of being), epistemology (the doctrine of knowledge) and

2. Natural law axiology The emergence of a legal-axiological approach is associated with the emergence of natural law views, with the distinction between natural law and positive law (authoritatively given, artificial, arbitrary, official,

3. Libertarian-legal axiology Consistent overcoming of the shortcomings of the natural law approach (in the field of legal axiology as well as in matters of legal ontology and epistemology) leads not to positivism and legalism, but to a theoretically more developed

Chapter 6. Legal epistemology

1. The concept of legal values

2. Form of legal values

3. Types of legal values:

a) freedom as a value. Law as a form of freedom

b) justice as a fundamental legal value.

I. It is impossible to understand the phenomenon of law without revealing the content of legal reality, knowledge of the basic forms of its existence. This is what legal ontology does. The meaning of the problem of legal reality is to clarify what law is. The structure of legal reality is made up of the relationship between natural and positive law, as two opposing, but interconnected forms of understanding. The forms of existence of law include ideas of law, law, legal actions and relationships. Any legal understanding is based on the corresponding concept of the nature (essence) of man. Ideas about human nature act as the basis for the legitimacy of government decisions. Within the framework of legal anthropology, the question of the criteria of legality is resolved. She studies the humanistic foundations of law, the relationship between personality and law. The axiological approach to law reveals the purpose of law in universal, social, cultural development, determines the nature of legal values, their content and hierarchy.

The theory of values ​​(axiology) also finds its application in the field of law. Legal values ​​and assessments in the sphere of legal consciousness have regulatory significance. Legal norms, in turn, acquire values ​​and become the object of evaluation. Unlike knowledge, values ​​are not subject to logical verification. They represent unified emotionally and intellectually perceived data that awaken subjects to their possession, preservation, and activity based on them, because perceived as a variety of benefits.

As a philosophical category, value is what people's feelings and minds dictate to recognize as particularly significant. Value acts as a goal in itself; one strives for it for its own sake. The orientation of the subject and his activities towards a certain value is called a value attitude. Value-based selection procedure - evaluation.

There is a connection and mutual transitions between values, assessments and norms. Lawmaking and legal regulation represent an area of ​​human activity with a pronounced evaluative nature. Because of this, the theory of law includes in its subject of study the subject of legal values. This is how a special direction is formed in the theory of state and law - axiological or the subject of axiology. The emergence of the axiological approach in jurisprudence is associated with the distinction between natural law and positive law. Law from the point of view of axiology is a strictly defined form of legal values, a specific form of legal obligation.

Thanks to values, law as a kind of “mechanism” receives its content, because the consciousness of the subject of law is directed towards values ​​as its object. Thanks to them, indifference in the behavior of a legal entity is removed and permissions and prohibitions of obligation are formed. Various facts and phenomena of a material and ideal nature can acquire the status of values ​​in law: various objects, goods, social relations, human actions, motives, motivations, ideas, goals, social institutions. They are legal values, because lie at the basis of law and the legal order, they act as an ideal justification for the rules of law, are enshrined and protected by legal norms, and constitute the goal of law. The importance of some social values ​​is especially great, which over time have acquired the character of basic principles of law (freedom, equality, justice, security). These principles and ideals represent values ​​to the extent that they are associated with the human personality. As legal values, they have the form of legal rights and freedoms of the individual in its individual and collective manifestations. Human rights themselves also acquire the status of important values.

Thus, in a modern civilized society, law is not only a value, a tool for resolving contradictions in various spheres of society, but also resolving contradictions in various spheres of society, but also as a developmental means. The value of law is impossible outside the context of the activities of subjects of law, organizational forces, and relevant institutions for creating the implementation of law. In the most general way, the intrinsic value of law can be defined as the expression of a socially organized form, the adherence to which ensures the reproduction of legal states by legal means, resulting in new opportunities and greater freedom for the self-development of man and society. In this capacity, law can provide people, various subjects in the form of subjects of rights with new space and opportunities for development. Thus, the criterion for the value of law is a self-developing personality.

II. Legal values ​​are a type of spiritual values ​​that satisfy the needs of social groups in society in regulating social relations and people's actions. Their main and specific function is regulatory. Therefore, legal values ​​are intended to create, maintain and strengthen social order and discipline, the normal functioning of society.

Moreover, they are deontic values, i.e. have a clearly defined prescriptive character. Unlike others, they are formally established and protected by the state. As deontic values, they are distinguished by another feature - they have a probabilistic nature. This feature is associated with the possibility of conscious, volitional choice of behavior options by social (legal) subjects. In the axiology of law, 3 forms of values ​​can be distinguished:

Social target values ​​and ideals;

Subject-embodied values;

Personal (or existential).

I. Social ideals and values. The initial form of legal values ​​is their existence in the form of values ​​developed by social consciousness in the form of ideas about justice, freedom, equality in various spheres of society. Under ideal usually understand what we are striving for - a normative-value example of what is due in the highest, perfect form. The need for an ideal as a special form of regulation of human activity is associated with a person’s orientation towards models of what should be, towards values, on the basis of which a person constantly goes beyond his own limitations. The German philosophers Kant and Fichte believed that the ideal is the highest, final goal on the path of gradual moral self-improvement, on the path of gradual awareness of “human dignity” as the highest and only principle of “ideal legislation.” According to Kant, law is the goal of a society in a civil state. Law acts for people as the highest principle from which all maxims concerning society must proceed. Therefore, it is believed that the main problem of the legal ideal is not the search for the final formula of social perfection, but the identification of those actions through the means by which each possible legal order can be improved.

II. Subject-embodied values. Legal ideals do not remain only facts of legal consciousness; they are enshrined in regulations, constitutions, and laws. Thus, legal ideals are realized in the system of legal relations - in the form of relationships between formally equal, free and independent subjects of law, in legal procedures and mechanisms. With changes in social and legal relations, a revaluation of values ​​occurs; much of what was considered absolute and immutable is depreciated and new value ideals appear.

III. Personal, existential values ​​are ideal ideas about goods, rights, and the limits of aspirations associated with the inclinations and desires of the individual; they act, to a certain extent, as authoritative and obligatory attitudes of her consciousness. As Mikhail Bakhtin argued, “Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity” - M., 1986. - P. 120) “No one can take a neutral position towards I and the other: the abstract cognitive point of view is devoid of a value approach, for a value installation it is necessary to take a single place in a single event. Any assessment is the occupation of an individual position in being: even God had to be incarnate in order to have mercy, suffer and forgive, as if to step away from the abstract point of view of justice.”

But what people choose for themselves as the value of their lives, in which they see the meaning of their existence, is not necessarily something lofty and noble. It can also be directed against other people. What people choose, what they make meaning for themselves depends on what kind of person they are. Therefore, legal values ​​are derived from the concept of personality. Law in the life of society and individuals acts both as a form of realization of human rights and as a guarantee of freedom and justice.

III. In the hierarchy of rights and values, a special place is occupied by the idea of ​​law as the idea of ​​freedom and law as a form of freedom. Freedom has been a value for people in different eras and in different forms. It is not associated exclusively with any one form of social order. The idea of ​​freedom has many meanings. Therefore, it is necessary, firstly, to separate “legal” freedom from “actual”, secondly, to take into account the conditional nature of the division into “internal” and “external” freedom, thirdly, to distinguish 2 types of freedom - “freedom from” (negative freedom) and “freedom for” (positive freedom). Legal freedom is permission to perform certain actions, without caring whether this permission to act corresponds to a real possibility. Actual freedom comes down to the ability to do and choose what you want. Legal freedom is based on freedom of choice. At the same time, freedom is called, firstly, the very fact of choice, and secondly, the unpredictability of what exactly he will choose. And the more choice he has, the more freedom he has. N. Berdyaev wrote: “The definition of freedom as choice is only an element of freedom. True freedom is discovered not when a person has to choose, but when he has made a choice.” (“The Kingdom of the Spirit and the Kingdom of Caesar” - M., 1995. P. 325). The situation of choice itself is not freedom, but a prerequisite for free action.

For law, it is important that a person clearly understands the measure of freedom that carries within itself the charge of destroying injustice.

Civil society and the state use legal means to designate the limits beyond which the external freedom of subjects should not extend. External freedom presupposes a search for methods and forms of restrictions. These can be not only legal laws of a prohibitive nature, but also the very fact of coexistence of many individuals with their social rights and freedoms. Law, in its original essence, is a form created by people who are logically and historically intended to be an institution designed to organize freedom, to give it certainty and security. Therefore, law is not simply a universal scale or an equal measure of freedom for individuals. Where free individuality, supremacy, and the legal significance of an individual are denied, there is not and cannot be law (and the legal principle of formal equality), there cannot be valid subjects of law, legal laws and relations, then, consequently, law is so fundamental to society's character, as well as freedom, which takes different forms in the minds of people.

The word "justice" comes from the word "right" (truth), and in Latin - yustitial (justice) - yus (right). Justice in the eyes of the ancients acted as a measure, a law, a principle. Law is a measure of the realization of freedom and at the same time a norm of political justice, i.e. law is normatively established justice. Since the time of Aristotle, two types of justice have been distinguished:

distributive and balancing. Distributive justice means the division of common goods in proportion to the contribution of a particular subject. Here, both equal and unequal allocation of corresponding benefits (power, honor, money) are possible. The criterion of balancing justice is arithmetic equality. The scope of application of this principle is civil transactions, compensation for harm, punishment. The principle of justice says: not the same thing for everyone, but to each his own, i.e. for the unequal, the equal became unequal. The coexistence of people on the basis of mutual recognition of rights and freedoms represents justice. It acts as a special mechanism that maintains the measure of balance of legal values ​​and relatively determines the moment of dominance in the event of a conflict between these values. Modern processes of globalization have led to the justification of universal justice. The content of universal justice includes: a) the requirement of equality (“to act in the same way under the same conditions”);

b) the requirement of impartiality and the prohibition of arbitrariness;

c) the requirement of balance between loss and gain (“fair exchange”).

It is traditionally believed that the purpose of justice is to maintain and reproduce balance. It is used both to evaluate human activity from the perspective of certain rules, and to evaluate these rules and their application. Two aspects of justice (formal and substantive) reflect two sides of the problem of fairness of law - criteria for assessing the fairness or injustice of a law, on the one hand, and its application in specific cases. The essence of formal justice is the consistent, impartial, objective application of rules.

O. Heffe in his work “Politics. Right. Justice" (M., 1994) identifies 3 elements of the meaning of justice:

1. justice has the nature of a moral obligation;

2. it is closest to duties that are recognized voluntarily and are above simple coercion;

3. its measure lies in distributive benefit - what is useful to each person is fair.

All modern concepts of justice contain the image of man as a being relatively capable of self-improvement and self-restraint. Therefore, the most appropriate principle will be such a principle of justice, which I recognize as fairness, which will provide the best conditions for the realization and autonomy of the individual, a measure of the relationship between freedom and equality.

Questions to the topic:

1. What is the nature of values ​​in law?

2. What does the concept of “legal ideal” mean?

3. How freedom is understood in different systems of legal understanding.

4. Why is justice considered a fundamental legal value?

Legal regulation

1. Legal impact and legal regulation.

2. Limits of legal regulation.

3. Subject and methods of legal regulation.

4. Types of legal regulation and legal regimes

5. Mechanism of legal regulation.

I. Human society is characterized by one or another degree of organization and orderliness. This is caused by the need to harmonize the needs, interests of individuals and their organization. Achieving such consent is carried out through legal influence.

Law is an important means of regulating the relationships between individuals, social groups, and society as a whole; it establishes the rights and freedoms of the individual. It acts as a social value.

Legal influence acts as part of the system of social regulation of public relations. The main element of socially managing and managed systems are people, and management comes down to the fact that each of them influences the consciousness and behavior of others. Legal influence in the system of company management has a special place, because it represents one of the important organizational factors aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of people's practical activities. When studying the relationship between legal regulation and legal impact, it is necessary to clarify the concepts of “regulation” and “impact”. The term “regulation” means ordering, adjusting, bringing something into conformity with something. The term “influence” means influencing something through a system of actions. Therefore, the impact of unification is broader than regulation, because influence includes both legal regulation through certain normative laws and other legal means and forms of influence on people's behavior. Thus, legal influence is an effective, normative and organizational influence on social relations as a special system of its own legal means (rules of law, legal relations, acts of implementation and application, and other legal phenomena (legal consciousness, legal culture, legal principles, law-making process) In the general impact of law, V.N. Kudryavtsev, in his work “Law and Behavior” (M., 1978), proposed to distinguish the following channels: informational, value-oriented, coercion and stimulation. Subsequently, it was emphasized that coercion relates to the functioning of law. that side of it, which expresses the activity of the state and consists in the state power regulation of social relations. The same applies to stimulation, it, like coercion, relates to its own legal influence, i.e. legal regulation. Therefore, the generally accepted channels of legal influence are information ( law as a type of normative information, value-oriented (the impact of law as a social value on social relations)).

Thus, legal regulation is understood as the impact on social relations with the help of specific legal means: rules of law, legal relations, acts of implementation of law. As a result of legal regulation, a legal basis is formed for organizing the activities of participants in regulatory relations and achieving actual goals. Legal regulation covers:

1.specific activities of the state (its rule-making bodies) related to the development of legal means to ensure their validity;

2.activities of direct participants in public relations aimed at finding and attracting means of legal regulation to harmonize their behavior with the law.

Thus, regulation can be both external to a person (someone influences a person in some way) and internal (self-regulation). The specificity of law lies mainly in inducing simulated actions in the recipients in accordance with its requirements or restraining them from them. However, these actions themselves cannot arise without the will and consciousness of their bearer. This is due to the fact that, as L. Petrozhitsky noted, “law is a psychological factor of social life, and it acts mentally. Its action consists in stimulating or reducing motives for various actions, abstinence, strengthening and developing some inclinations and traits of human character, and weakening and eradicating others.” Numerous studies and legal experience indicate that an adequate response to legal stimuli (norms, legal activity) has a strictly defined significance, the essence of which is that only by refracting in the human psyche, evoking in him the appropriate attitude, a legal prescription is implemented in practical actions. Legally due, not passed through the consciousness and psyche of its addressees, has only a formal legal meaning and does not acquire the quality of a legal regulator. The receptivity of a legal norm to its addressee is the property that it will produce an effect in public life and achieve the goals envisaged in it.

Thus, legal regulation can only be called such an impact in which the goals become sufficiently clearly defined. Thus, in order to streamline the use of land, ensure its safety, and increase the efficiency of land use, a land law is issued. The impact of norms can be called legal regulation. But if, as a result of the impact of a legislative act, a consistent effect occurs that is not provided for by law, and in some cases contradicts the goals of the legislator, then such an impact cannot be considered legal regulation. For example, under the influence of land legislation, the price of land plots has increased and the number of speculative transactions has increased. The negative impact of the land law on social relations cannot be considered legal regulation, because This was not the intent of the legislator. Impact carried out by non-legal means, for example, even the promotion of legal ideals through the media, is not legal regulation.

At the same time, in real life the spiritual, ideological psychological impact of law intersects and is combined with special legal regulation. The impact on social relations, on people's behavior through special legal means and methods, in turn, has an impact on the spiritual, moral, ideological aspects of life.

II. The limits of legal regulation are understood as the limits of legal intervention in social relations determined by certain factors by establishing general rules of conduct for their participants using the rules of law. The determination of these limits depends on external reasons on which the boundaries of a given activity depend, and on internal reasons - on the ability of the right to direct in a certain direction, change, shape certain social relations.

The role of the factor influencing these limits is the ratio of the objective, natural and subjective, volitional in those life relations that are subject to regulatory influence. Law can only guide volitional behavior, therefore the limits of general legal regulation of certain types of social relations are not the same. The least opportunities for legal regulation are in the sphere of material production, but they are increasing in the spheres of distribution and consumption of created material assets. This means that the first factor on which the elements of legal regulation depend lies in its own subject of legal regulation, and the second factor, the essence of which is that even in the presence of a volitional moment, this or that social relationship can be subject to the regulatory influence of law only if there is the possibility of choosing an option behavior in a given life relationship. There is no point in establishing a general rule about satisfying hunger with food, because there is simply no other publicly available behavior option. And, conversely, the fate of the property of the deceased can be decided in different ways, therefore the rules of law establish the most optimal option for transferring ownership of this property. The third factor is the state’s interest in legal influence on certain life relationships of people. All this is determined by the needs of society. For each stage of development of society, there is objectively a certain regulatory optimal number of legal norms, which cannot but be taken into account when establishing the limits of legal regulation of people’s lives - a totalitarian regime or anarchy. The fourth factor is the internal laws of the law itself, the newest possibilities of its own properties. The normativity of law and its other properties in one way or another affect the limits of programmed behavior, this serves as a kind of indicator of the possibilities of regulatory influence on social relations. An attempt to use legal properties without taking into account their capabilities, especially in the tax sphere, does not and cannot give stable positive results. Finally, the elements of legal regulation are inevitably influenced by the possibilities of “reasonable human activity”, the psychological abilities of a person to consciously perceive legal regulations and implement them. This fifth factor indicates the personal aspect. All the mentioned factors are closely interconnected and only in their totality make it possible to understand the element of legal regulation of social relations in various spheres of society.

Thus, the limits of legal regulation are rooted in the nature of human activity, predetermined by general culture and civilization, and determined by economic, historical, religious, national and other circumstances.

III. The subject of legal regulation answers the question: what is regulated by law. It includes those types of social relations that:

1.Can be regulated by law;

2. Require legal action. Thus, not all actions and relations of social subjects can become objects of legal regulation, but only those that are normative in nature, i.e. typical for given conditions, repeatable, distinguished by massive (real or possible) manifestations, subject to state legal control, can be translated into the language of law, i.e. formalized. The features of the content of legal regulation, and hence the features of the structure of law, largely depend on the content and nature of the subject. Certain types of social relations (for example, organizational, property, power-punitive) are capable of “accepting” legal regulation of certain types, which, in principle, predetermines the division of law into branches.

The specifics of legal regulation are also influenced by elements of social relations - the position of its subjects, the characteristics of objects. (A significant difference between social relations regulated by law is that they can be subjects of legal regulation only because they act as volitional relations). Such social relations, regardless of their place in the structure of social connections, are expressed in the volitional behavior of people. (So, social relations become the subject of legal regulation only when they manifest themselves in the form of property, labor, organizational and other social connections of a volitional nature). At the same time, an important pattern is revealed: the impact of law on social life is more significant, the stronger the legal forms have a stimulating effect on the will and consciousness of people.

The nature of the regulation of relations by law predetermines the specifics of the legal impact on these relations or indicates the method of legal regulation. Unlike the subject of legal regulation, which answers the question of what is regulated by law, the method of legal regulation indicates how these relations are regulated.

Methods of legal regulation are methods of legal influence, their combination, which characterizes the use in a given area of ​​social relations of one or another set of legal means of influence. They serve as a unifying principle that divides law into branches. There are four elements in the method of legal regulation:

1. Ensuring that participants in public relations have the opportunity to acquire rights and obligations, i.e. determination of the general state of subjects of social connections;

2. Conditions (events, facts)

3. Subjective rights and legal obligations;

4. Measures to ensure the behavior of subjects of legal relations.

These elements determine the specifics of the method of legal regulation. There are two primary, initial methods. This is: centralized, imperative regulation (method of subordination), in which regulation from above and below is carried out on an authoritative basis. This method is inherent in public law, primarily administrative and criminal law. The legal fact for the emergence of legal relations will be a government order (an order to transfer to another job, a court decision). Decentralized, discretionary regulation (coordination method) is based on taking into account initiative, independence in the choice of one or another behavior by participants in regulated relations. It allows parties to regulate their own actions at their own discretion. The law defines the limits of such discretion or establishes certain procedures. It is based on the free (non-subordinate) position of the participants in legal relations and the contract as the source of its occurrence. In the field of law, these primary methods, depending on the nature of the regulated relations and other social factors, appear in different versions. In their purest form, these primary methods are in public, primarily administrative law (centralized regulation - a method of coordination). Each sectoral method expresses a special legal regime of regulation and consists of a set of techniques and means of regulation, which exists only in this specific regulatory material and is closely related to the corresponding group of social relations - the subject of legal regulation.

IV. The terms “method” and “method” are similar concepts and largely coincide in their content. At the same time, methods of legal regulation should be understood as those ways of legal influence that are expressed in a legal norm and in other elements of the legal system. The main methods of legal regulation are:

permission – granting individuals the right to their own active actions;

prohibition – imposing on persons the obligation to refrain from committing actions of a certain kind;

positive obligation – imposing on individuals the obligation to actively behave.

All of the above methods are in one way or another related to subjective rights. Moreover, if with permission the subjective right (including the right of demand) forms the very content of this method of legal regulation, then with a positive obligation and prohibition the right to demand this to other persons, its meaning is to ensure the fulfillment of an active (obligation) or passive (prohibition) legal obligation.

The key element of legal regulation - legal permission - is a defining legal means designed to ensure social freedom and human activity. Legal permission is expressed in subjective rights to one’s own active behavior. It is most often directly formed in the text in the form of enabling norms. At the same time, the presence of legal permission may follow from a set of legal norms (for example, permission to conclude any transactions between citizens, since these transactions are not prohibited, all conditions for transactions are met, and they do not contradict the principles of law). A necessary, important legal means of ensuring the organization of social relations is a legal prohibition. In many cases, it represents moral prohibitions translated into legal language and equipped with legal sanction. At the same time, there are many legal prohibitions that directly express the organizational activities of the state on issues of public administration and environmental protection. Legal prohibitions are characterized by a consolidating function: they are designed to confirm and elevate the existing prevailing order of relations to the rank of inviolable. And therefore, from the regulatory side, they are expressed in the legal obligation of passive content, i.e. in the duties to refrain from committing actions of a certain kind. Thus, prohibition in law is a legal obligation. And from this side, prohibitions, in principle, are characterized by everything that is characteristic of legal obligations in general (fundamental unambiguity, imperative categoricalness, indisputability, provision of legal mechanisms). The originality of the content of prohibitions, expressed in passive behavior, puts the prohibition in a special position.

This predetermines the features of legal means and mechanisms, in particular their legal expression in prohibited norms, their implementation in a special form - the form of compliance. Positive obligations, which are one of the means of legal regulation, express its active, forcefully binding side. This method of regulation from the legal side consists in imposing legal obligations of active content on persons, i.e. in the obligation to build their active behavior as provided for in legal norms. Positive obligations are characterized by the so-called “new encumbrance”: persons are ordered to do something that, if there were no such encumbrance, they would not have done or would have done in the wrong way, not to the same extent. From the very beginning of its emergence, the content of law invariably contains positive obligations. In addition, according to A.B. Vengerov and N.S. Barabasheva, the very emergence of law is characterized by the emergence of positively binding norms, conditioned by the development of production relations (farming and cattle breeding). However, positive obligations are characteristic not so much of law as of the activities of governing bodies. In some cases, they may manifest themselves in addition to legal norms. Positive obligations in their legal properties differ significantly from permissions and prohibitions. They are mediated by relative legal relations, in which one party is burdened with a legal obligation to perform active actions, the other has only the right to demand, and in case of non-fulfillment, a claim designed to ensure the actual fulfillment of the legal obligation.

According to F.N. Fatkullina, it is completely unacceptable to limit the method of legal regulation - only by permission, prohibition and obligation, which is an echo of the command-administrative system, and in the new conditions it is necessary to use all the tools of legal regulation developed in the history of civilization. Such methods may include: confirmation of natural human rights and freedoms, international rules, traditions or customs of business (Article 55 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation; Article 5.7 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation), consolidation of the legal status of the individual, the constitutional foundations of the social and state system, the order of formation, status and tasks of public authorities, organizational and legal forms of entrepreneurship, conditions and types of legal personality of participants in regulated relations (Constitution of the Russian Federation; Chapters 3-5, 13-19 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation); authorization (granting powers) to resolve certain legally significant issues. For example, judges - to resolve criminal and civil cases, tax inspectors - to check taxpayer documents; Restriction of freedom of action in certain relationships when this is necessary for socially significant purposes. This is used for licensing, certification, and state registration quota requirements. A recommendation differs from a permission in that here a wish is expressed in legal form, the acceptance or rejection of which depends on the participants in the legal relationship. (These are the so-called guidelines). Reward for an action specified in a legal norm. State coercion in order to restore violated rights and freedoms, punish the perpetrator, and stop the offense.

It should be noted that each branch of law is most characterized by a certain “set” of means, methods, their specific combination, determined by the peculiarities of the regulated relations in this area of ​​life.

Axiology is the study of values. The use of the concept of “value” in the special sense of what is morally due goes back to Kant. Value in the ᴇᴦο interpretation is that which has the meaning of obligation and freedom. The categorical imperatives that Kant formulates in relation to morality and law are also connected with this morally necessary.

Kant's followers (R. G. Lotze, W. Windelband, etc.) went further than Kant and developed ideas about the normative and regulatory significance of values ​​and goal-setting in the sphere of not only morality, but also science, art and culture in general. A different approach to the problem of values ​​is characteristic of objective-idealistic philosophy (from Plato to Hegel and their modern followers), according to which being is good (i.e. value), true being, i.e. objective mind, idea, meaning of being, being in the mode of obligation and, therefore, value significance.

The subject area and main theme of legal axiology are the problems of understanding and interpreting law as a value (as a goal, obligation, imperative requirement, etc.) and the corresponding value judgments (and assessments) about the legal meaning (i.e. the value sense - with point of view of law) of the actually given law (positive law) and the state.

2. Legist axiology. Due to the denial of the objective properties and characteristics of law, independent of the legislator and the law, legalism, in axiological terms, essentially rejects the legal values ​​themselves and recognizes only the value of the law (positive law). The legalistic “value” of law (positive law) is official universal bindingness, imperious imperativeness, and not general validity on any objective (not imperious-command) legal basis. The radical approach of the neo-positivist Kelsen is indicative in this regard; law is valuable only as an order, as a norm, a form of obligation.

3. Natural legal axiology According to natural law axiology, natural law embodies the objective properties and values ​​of “real” law and therefore acts as a proper model, goal and criterion for the value assessment (in principle, negative) of positive law and the corresponding law-making authority (legislator, state as a whole) . At the same time, natural law is understood as a moral (religious, moral, etc.) phenomenon by its nature and is initially endowed with the corresponding absolute value. As a result of such a mixture of law and morality (religion, etc.), natural law appears as a symbiosis of various social norms, as a kind of moral-legal (or moral-legal, religious-legal) complex, from the standpoint of which this or that (as rule, negative) value judgment about positive law and positive legislator (state power). With this approach, positive law and the state are assessed (in terms of value) essentially from ethical positions, from the point of view of the author of this concept’s ideas about the moral (moral, religious, etc.) nature and moral content of real law. The totality of such moral and legal properties and substantive characteristics of natural law in a generalized form is interpreted as an expression of the universal and absolute justice of natural law, which must correspond to positive law and the activities of the state as a whole.