LEGAL CULTURE: EVOLUTION OF ESSENCE AND STRUCTURE

The article aims at understanding the methodology of the socio-philosophical study of legal culture in its substantive, structural and functional dimensions, with a view to clarifying its social role and the genesis of its elements of legal culture. The relevance of the analysis of legal culture in relation to the new sociocultural paradigm is justified. Legal culture is viewed in the context of an axiological analysis of the content of the law-affirming principles as indicators of its degree of development. Various types of legal culture reflect a conscious understanding by citizens of the value of individual freedom and rights. A legal culture is a specific form of human existence in the sphere of law, which is embodied in the legal life of society and the professional culture of public authorities. It bases the mental and spiritual side of the entire legal system of society and legal awareness, legal relations, legal order, all forms of legal activity. It regulates human behavior, accepts sociocultural and historical particularities of society, and is a powerful tool for building social stability. Understanding the legal culture is linked to the democratic transition of society towards a modern sociocultural paradigm and a new type of legal relationship. Attention is drawn to the unresolved problems of the formation and functioning of a legal culture in the changing conditions of democratic transformation of society — the genesis of its structure, the priorities of building the elements of its structural hierarchy, and the correlation with the principles of law, as its ideological foundation. Even more significant is the problem of determining the connection of legal culture with the requirements of legal ethics in conditions of «ethics» functioning of power structures in their relations with citizens and institutions of civil society. Therefore, legal culture is to be studied in its substantive and functional interaction with legal ethics. In the era of the use of the Internet, information and communication technologies (ICT), social networks, electronic public management,»digital» the question of their influence on legal consciousness and culture were inevitably raised.