OBJECT OF LAW REFORM: CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES AND METHODOLOGICAL CRITERIA FOR DEFINITION

Abstract

The article carries out a general theoretical study of the problem of determining the object of law reform as an independent phenomenon in the system of social transformations. Establishing the object of law reform is fundamentally theoretical and methodological in nature and cannot be carried out without analyzing the main research approaches to understanding law reform and types of law understanding, within which the corresponding vision of law is formed. Based on a critical understanding of doctrinal positions, the methodological vulnerability of identifying law reform with the reform of the state, public administration, the law system as a whole or with state (legal) policy, as well as reducing it exclusively to changes in legislation, is proven. It is shown that such interpretations lead to the erosion of the actual legal dimension of reform processes and the leveling of the independent significance of law reform. The need to distinguish law reform as a purposeful, significant and progressive impact on law and the transformation of the law system as a complex, multi-vector and long-term socio-cultural process is substantiated. It is proved that not all elements of the law system can be a direct object of reformist activity, since law culture, law consciousness, law traditions and legally significant behavior are formed mainly evolutionary. Special attention is paid to the analysis of law understanding as a worldview and methodological foundation of legal science and practice. Law understanding is considered as a process and result of purposeful cognition and comprehension of the essence and content of law as a special socio-cultural phenomenon. The pluralism of types of law understanding (natural law, positivist, sociological and integrative) determines different ideas about the boundaries and direction of law reform, and the dominant type of law understanding in society significantly affects the content of reform decisions and their axiological orientation. As a result of the study, taking into account the provisions of the theory of “soft positivism”, the object of law reform is defined as law as a generally binding, formally defined normative regulator of social relations, which corresponds to the degree of justice, freedom, equality and humanism recognized in society. The dual status of law in reform processes is substantiated – as a direct object of purposeful transformations and as a normative means of institutional consolidation of achieved social changes.