Identification of the substantial characteristics of law in the digital age

The article discusses the need for new approaches to legal research, driven by the introduction of digital technologies into public life. Under these conditions qualitative changes in consciousness and methods of human worldview formation, virtualization of social relations and their value basis, and transformation of cultural identity acquire the significance of typological features of law in the digital age. Digital reality is a special human “habitat” that changes the direction of the evolution of the human brain and consciousness; in combination with social experience, it alters the type of human thinking and worldview; creates conditions for the transformation of the value basis of culture, the splitting of human individuality and cultural identity; virtualizes a significant part of social relations; gives rise to a new structure of society and new forms of social inequality. These directions of evolution of social practice, social relations, their value basis, consciousness, and human worldview, being expressed in law, acquire the significance of its typological characteristics, in which the phenomenon of syncretism manifests itself in a new, unique form. The typological feature of law is its fused, inseparable expression of a complex of natural, biological, and social regularities governing human and social development, as well as technical regularities conditioned by the integration of elements of the digital environment and non-biological resources into human consciousness. The law of the digital age considers value not in the individual, but in their identity, acceptable from the perspective of the official authorities. The legal assessment of this identity is associated with the emergence of a new group of objects of legal regulation-human virtual interpretations of legally significant social meanings. The digital age is giving rise to new forms of social division, the criteria of which are the degree of human integration into virtual space and the human attitude toward technology as a means of production. This results in the reflection in law of new groups of social interests, changing its essence.