Legal Theory: Between Dogmatic Heritage and the Language of New Analytics

The article is devoted to analyzing conceptual shifts in the description and explanation of the phenomenon of law. The subject of the science of law constitutes the category of changing mental, linguistic and conceptual forms of its existence and expression. The development of the science of law is subject to the cultural and historical logic of evolution both as a phenomenon of law and the language of reasoning regarding law. The evolution of the phenomenon of law and the evolution of the science of law take place in a complex and dynamic environment of institutional and conceptual changes and mutual influences. Legal reality as a social fact and the concept of the fact exists within the cultural and historical boundaries of the interaction between the language of legal practice and the language of legal theory. Understanding of legal reality as a linguistic reality (phenomenon) requires the development of mental models (epistems) that allow us to identify the most significant aspects of manifestations of legal reality in a variety of socio-cultural contexts of its linguistic — institutional (practical) and conceptual (theoretical) — expression. The current agenda covers the formation of the general body of the theory of jurisprudence per se, or jurisprudence of the judiciary. Its analytical basis forms theoretical history of the legal science presented in various cultural and historical forms and expressions of the legal knowledge.