AXIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE METHODOLOGY OF LAW-CULTURAL DISCOURSE

Scientific approaches to legal culture have traditionally been reduce to social and philosophical and, to a lesser extent, to axiological (value) comprehension. The cognitive approach to legal culture aimed at an objective understanding of legal reality, while the axiological approach aimed at recognizing the highest moral justification for the value of human life. Therefore, legal culture should be understood on the basis of axiological criteria, since it is bound by the concept of values. They direct the behavior of subjects, correct it in accordance with their content, which is normatively formalized. Legal values are the values of culture that embodied in the legal system of society, all its elements — legal doctrines, norms, acts, relations. Legal values are embodied in the categories of ethics, moral norms; they play the role of criteria for evaluating legal phenomena. The hierarchy of principles embodied in the norms of law, legal activity, acts of application of law and lawmaking cannot be comprehend outside of axiological theory. Legal values point to the main causes and form the ideal model of the law of any national legal system. The perception of legal values by society and the individual ideally forms a culture of legal behavior. The value content has many forms of existence. The idea of constitutionalism postulated the value orientations of legal science and law-making, determined the importance of legal ethics as a necessary component of the activities of government institutions. The attitude towards values and their assessment in society is ambiguous: from a categorical refusal to their approval. Legal culture, its values serve as a foundation on the basis of which a multivariate social practice is modified by legal means. Values determine the level of legitimacy of law, legal practice — legislative, law enforcement, judicial, control, limiting legal arbitrariness in the activities of government institutions, in the private legal sphere, hindering negative social experience and cultural preferences unacceptable to society.