Balynska O. Semiotics of Law as Philosophic and Legal Paradigm

The research presents a semiotics of law as separate field of philosophy of law that conceptually covers all major aspects of philosophy (ontology, epistemology, axiology, anthropology and praxeology) of law as a social phenomenon created and acting on the basis of functionally oriented codes, symbols, signs of social reality. Legal sign is defined as a tangible information carrier that is understandable to a certain legal culture medium within which this sign operates; it possesses a clear pragmatic feature – the reflection of human practical interests in his/her behaviour, activities and the way of thinking. Law is presented as a symbolic information and communicative model of legal behaviour of social subject, options of inter-subjective and subject-objective social relations (legal in particular), as well as legal reality. The study describes a specific type of semiotic characteristics of a human being – homo semioticus, – that provides for a dual understanding of an individual: 1) as the main subject of creating signs of socio-regulatory space; 2) as a symbolic unit of this space.