Sukhodolia M. Legal Culture and Positive Forms of Legal Awareness: Theoretical and Legal Aspects of the Correlation

The dissertation is devoted to deepening the doctrinal foundations for understanding the theoretical and legal aspects of the relationship between legal culture and positive forms of legal awareness, as well as developing practical recommendations for improving their functioning. The study sets and solves the following tasks: identified and clarified the theoretical and applied aspects of the relationship between legal culture and legal consciousness; revealed the socio-legal prerequisites for the analysis of legal culture and legal consciousness of society; analyzed and made suggestions for improving the methodological component of the study of legal culture as a reflection of positive forms of legal consciousness; identified the problems of analysis and transformations of legal culture and legal consciousness of transitive societies; the actual state of the legal culture of the population of Ukraine is specified as a reflection of the deformed legal consciousness; a set of means of direct influence on the legal consciousness is determined as one of the ways to increase the level of legal culture; means of indirect influence on the legal consciousness are identified. The scientific novelty of the results obtained consists in the conceptual substantiation of the doctrinal foundations for understanding the theoretical and legal aspects of the relationship between legal culture and positive forms of legal consciousness, as well as in the development of practical recommendations for improving their functioning. In particular, it is concluded that legal culture: expressed exclusively in practical actions, behavior; characterized by the legality of behavior; is a direct consequence of a high level of legal awareness of a person, that is, it correlates with legal activity as a form of legal awareness. Aspects of the correlation of legal consciousness, legal culture and legal values are substantiated. It is proved that legal culture characterizes the practical expression of exclusively conscious legal activity, and not all its levels. The place of legal culture and legal consciousness in the legal system is clarified. In particular, legal awareness cannot be clearly attributed to any element of the legal system, because it permeates the entire legal system from top to bottom and mediates the intellectual and psychological level of perception of law. And legal culture mediates the practical level, is located exclusively within the framework of legal practice as an element of the legal system. The mechanism of inclusion of legal consciousness and legal culture in the mechanism of operation of law is detailed. It is revealed that a characteristic feature of transitive societies is not the simple presence of two or more value systems in them, but the presence of a conflict between them. This leads to two possible problems: 1) the complexity of choosing a system of values from among those functioning in society; 2) certainty with the choice of a certain system of values, but at the same time the lack of strategic developments and tactical means to consistently defend them and implement them in social and legal reality. It is argued that Ukrainian society is in parallel in two states of "transit": 1) from totalitarian to democratic; 2) from quarantine to post-quarantine. Each of these transitive societies has its own characteristics, but when faced, they increase the negative impact on the legal culture and legal consciousness of citizens. It is proved that at the national level, the legal awareness of the quarantine period of citizens of all states without exception showed a downward trend and a tendency to deformities. At the level of legal culture, the population of different countries and state institutions demonstrated completely different behaviors, which often did not have common features even in states of the same legal family. Attention is focused on the fact that the legal consciousness of the population of Ukraine should be analyzed differentially, and not monolithic, since different social groups have certain features. It is proposed to classify measures of influence on legal awareness and legal culture according to the vector of direction into two blocks, namely: a) means of direct influence; b) means of indirect influence. Among the means of direct influence on legal awareness and legal culture are: 1) legal literacy (legal upbringing); 2) legal education; 3) legal training. It is revealed that indirect means of raising legal consciousness and legal culture can be classified into: 1) proper legal; 2) general social; 3) socio-economic; 4) psychological; 5) informational; 6) organizational.