Semantic Conception of Law

Abstract

The article is a continuation of the author’s publications about integrative conception of the meaning of law in the Russian Journal of Legal Research No. 2 for 2016 and No. 1 for 2017. The author understands under the semantic conception of law an a integrative holistic and collective image of law, which always has a specific historical content (in this modern society) and operates in accordance with the principle of complementarity of different types of legal understanding. This conception contains several basic assumptions. First, the semantic conception is not an absolutely new type of legal understanding, and the meaning of law is one of the supporting connecting structures that, from the point of view of modern philosophy and methodology of science, characterize the interpretational style of scientific thinking. Secondly, the dispute between the philosophy of law and the theory of law for the priority in legal understanding can be solved by a scientific convention based on the concept of the meaning of law, which harmoniously combines the internal nature of law and its external relations with economics, politics, culture and other subsystems of society. Thus, the opposition between the law “from the inside” and that which is “outside” the law is removed. Thirdly, the semantic conception of law is able to set the optimal vector for improving the conceptual apparatus of jurisprudence and for modernizing the criteria of the scientific novelty of modern legal knowledge from the position of the so-called “classical” and “postclassical” legal paradigms. If the meaning of the law is improved by the internal logic of the development of the law itself, then the scientific novelty will always be postulated as “understanding traditional ideas at a new stage”. But if the meaning of law derives its sources from the social space, then, of course, it is necessary to recognize that philosophical concepts, terms and institutions can be included in the conceptual apparatus of law within the framework of a new objective interpretation. The semantic conception of law has significant theoretical and practical potential for system analysis of the problem of modern Russian legal understanding.