The Concept of ‘Truth’ in Legal Science: A Theoretical Exploration

The author explores the concept of “truth” in jurisprudence, positioning it both as the ultimate goal of legal research and as an autonomous entity with independent value due to its ability to reflect objective reality in scientific knowledge. While the classical correspondence theory (“truth is the adequation of things and intellect”, Latin: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus) provides a foundation, its methodological tools are often insufficient for the general theory of law and legal dogmatics. To address this, the article proposes enhancing classical approaches with modern scientific advancements, specifically incorporating the concept of supervenience from contemporary analytic philosophy. Despite the formality, abstractness, and temporality associated with legal reality, these should be recognized as intelligible elements of the objective mental existence of participants in legal relations. The article posits and substantiates the independent ontological status of legal phenomena, emphasizing the priority of rational identification over sensory perception, characteristic of objective idealism. Legal reality objects are categorized as essential, torsion, and fictitious to reflect, distort, or deform the true essence. The article pays special attention to the algorithm for distinguishing between real and apparent phenomena of legal reality. Achieving these goals is feasible through the use of dialectical, systemic, logical, normative-value, structural-functional, historical-legal, formal-legal, and theoretical-prognostic methods of cognition. The research findings demonstrate the relevance of combining the correspondence theory of truth with the concept of supervenience of legal reality to establish the ontological prerequisites for the emergence of legal constructions.