Sociocultural problems of the legal paradigm: retrospective and prospects

Abstract

The symbolic and emotional content of legal expression, observed in a historical and social perspective, as well as the morphological and structural features of law, reflect both socio-symbolic functions and specific socio-cultural canons, emphasizing the responsibility that the social context imposes on the legislator and the implementers of legal norms. The relations between self-referential meanings can act as signs indicating non-legal properties. However, as with language, in order for a concept to become symbolized in legal norms, it must first exist in a communication context. Moreover, the way in which a concept is symbolized using appropriate processes of legal formalization (legal language and legal paradigm) is determined by the relationship of a specific social context to this concept. Such symbolic correspondences belong to the category of social variables, since they determine the requirements imposed by the communication context. The article is intended as an insight into the problematic of the interaction of sociological and cultural understandings of law in Western pluralistic societies. In this article, the terms “monism” and “pluralism” denote different models of organizing, perceiving and legitimation of symbolic reality in the consciousness of the individual. These models, which were found in different historical stages of the development of society, are undoubtedly also applicable to modern societies.