State and law: transformation vectors in modern conditions

Saint Petersburg University of the Ministry of Interior of Russia, Department of Theory of State and Law, Saint Petersburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: n.nishnik@bk.ru

Abstract

Contemporaneity represents an epoch of qualitative changes in social life, which creates due grounds for different scenarios of development of the state and law. The concern for the prospects of state/legal organisation of the society has placed the problem of transformation of the state and law in the centre of scientific conceptualisation, made it a subject of heated debate and accounted for the creation of annalistic history. The authors of the article take part in the polylogue on the given subject by formulating their position on the future of the cultural phenomena – the state and the law. The philosophical/legal research is based on the recognition of the fact that the global scientific revolution has in fact become a reality, and there are due grounds for the formation of the post-classical legal science. The complexity and multidimensionality of the subject of the research – the prospects of transformation of a nation state and law in the conditions of contemporaneity – required a resort to interdisciplinary methodology. The accomplished research largely relied on the anthropocentric approach that allowed the authors to focus on a human being and its consciousness, considering that the latter has an ability to adapt to the challenges of globalisation and the development of digital technologies. As a result of the research, the authors came to the conclusion that the modern state is transforming and acquiring new characteristics under the powerful influence of globalisation processes. The claims of scholars who presume that the state will wither in the foreseeable stage of human development were subjected to criticism. The authors believe that the state continues to be the core of social organisation and adapts to the challenges and threats of the modern time by acquiring new characteristics. Transformation takes place as well in the sphere of legal regulation. The law is comprehended not just as a set of norms or daily activity of people aimed to realise these norms. The law is realised to construct the reality; at the same time the law as such becomes an object of influence of social transformation processes following which the content, forms, legal systems, as well as the mechanisms of law development and law enforcement, undergo changes. An important component of changes is transformation of the philosophical core of law reflecting the processes of change in the paradigm of values.