Conceptualizations of Legal Culture: Discursive Traditions and Explanatory Potential

Abstract

The interdisciplinary concept of legal culture has many definitions and interpretations that can be reduced to two approaches: the descriptive approach to existing practices and connections in society, and the prescriptive approach, which gives the concept of legal culture positivist connotations that inextricably link it to state norms. In Russian legal science, the prescriptive tradition prevails, reducing the concept to legal consciousness, or rather to the knowledge and understanding of the norms of positive law. At the same time, in the pre-revolutionary period, there were examples of following the descriptive tradition of using the concept of legal culture. Perspectives of the framework of the prescriptive approach may be useful in studies of the main enforcement actors, such as judges or police officers. Such studies make it possible to find out the level and specificity of knowledge of the norms of official law and the relationship of subjects of law enforcement to these norms. Within the framework of the descriptive approach, there is great potential for using this concept to study the relations of law and society, law enforcement patterns, and the field of comparative legal research. There are examples of successful using the results of such studies of legal culture for solving specific problems of legal policy. This overview draws attention to the methodological dangers that arise from inconsistent use of the concept of legal culture, which may lead to its complete depreciation. The author presents the main characteristics of each of the two traditions of understanding legal culture, as well as examples of their practical use in social research.