The thesis is dedicated to the definition of a scientifically grounded methodology for the study of legal culture. According to the author’s opinion, only the correctly chosen methodology will allow to systematize and synthesize the huge set of points of view in regard of legal culture that exists in scientific literature.
It is alleged that different methods of legal culture research should be summarized prior to their systemic cohesion in the proposed study. A theoretical system method that consistently leads to a complete and comprehensive reproduction of an object is the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. It is a universal method, suitable to study any system of phenomena. Moreover, since legal culture is a system of phenomena constituting a part of wider and complex systems of culture and law, it should be studied also using the universal method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete.
The phenomenon of culture is deemed the objective reality, which organically combines material and ideal. The whole sphere of culture concentrates, circles around the active subject – person, as around its spill, as this subject by its activity fills the material and ideal world of culture, develops and changes it, while developing itself. It is pointed out that the right is a phenomenon of culture, and in the notion of “legal culture” one of the varieties of culture is reflected, taking into account that the legal culture acts as a system of the subject created activities of the right to spiritual values, that is functioning as a form (method) of the implementation of progressive legal development of human, humanity and social conditions of their life.
The scientific work proves that the subjects of law and legal values represent the subject and object components of the single phenomenon of legal culture. In this, in our opinion, it finds its expression of the combination in the culture of the subjective and objective. It is alleged that the legal status of a person is the initial, static moment of law, which envisages the corresponding activity of the subject in law sphere, due to which the latter is filled with the attributes of the legal culture, “comes to life” and functions as a legal system of a certain society.
The author considers that the notion of legal personality should not be aware of the right to a context, which, on its part, depends on the entity it is created, and the character of the personality depends on a special legal and cultural atmosphere, where the subject of law acts. The law sphere is one of the most important subsystems of the normative sphere of culture, in which a person as a subject of culture generally acquires a specific legal subjectivity, i.e. acts as a subject of legal culture.
In this respect, the research stipulates that the concept of “legal values” should be explored in the context of legal culture, subject, and object relations as a kind of framework in the subject's actions to the object. Only in conscious and legal activity, all legal values - as spiritual values, created by the activities of the subjects of law, are produced and functioning. The only spiritual values are legal that serve as the means for implementation in the life and maintenance of moral, ethical, political and other values by establishing of legal activities of the legal order, oriented on these values.
