VALUE OF LAW AND MEANS OF ITS LEGITIMATION: VALUE OF LAW AND MEANS OF ITS LEGITIMATION: SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH

Axiological investigations of law in the conditions of post-non-classical scientific knowledge acquire special significance. The diversity and variability of social development reflected in the system of value coordinates require the study of the value foundations of legal reality. At the same time, jurisprudence in its typical manner of reductionism is trying to justify a single universal system of legal values without taking into account the sociocultural peculiarity of the phenomenon of law. The purpose of this article is an attempt to justify the value of law as an outcome of rational human activities based on a sociocultural approach and the foundations of legal communication. The initial methodological guidance was a combination of the principles of universalism and the sociocultural relativism of law. The investigation was based on the works of domestic and foreign researchers of legal axiology and social communication as M. Weber, N. Nenowski, G. Tarde, M. Dabber and others. The article justifies that legitimation of law can be provided through rational and irrational means the combination of which depends on the characteristics of the relevant cultural macro-system. According to specificity of modern cultural macro-system, a logical process of increasing the role of law is noted. The sociocultural approach to the study of legal values opens up opportunities for further research in the field of determining the role of law in the life of society in the postmodern era.

value of law, sociocultural approach, cultural macro-system, means of law legitimation