Modern understanding of legal policy

This article is dedicated to the theoretical understanding of the problem of ambiguity of the concept of “legal policy” as a complicated phenomenon that has a substantial number of attributes, which connect it with multiple occurrences within the legal sphere of social life and outside it; as well as overcoming such ambiguity through analyzing the diversity of characteristics of legal policy presented in the definitions of modern authors , and formation of the unified definition on their basis that would serve as methodological framework for the research of legal policy in all branches of juridical science. Research methodology includes the general scientific methods, such as analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, classification, and systemic approach. The author analyzes different points of view of the Russian scholars on formation of the concept of legal policy; describes their specific features; makes an attempt of their systematization. The conclusion is made on the presence of two different types of approaches towards determination of the content of legal policy. The author highlights most substantial characteristic suitable for both approaches, and offers an original version of a unified definition of legal policy of the state.