Leusenko, D. A. Integrated legal consciousness and the genetic method in legal sciences

Abstract: This article considers the problems of establishing a theory of integrated legal consciousness in Russia, outlines the particulars of developing the genetic method in the Russian school of legal sociology, and presents an analysis of the theoretical position of Bogdan Kistyakovsky in relation to the possibility of objective law and the role of the inherent concept of the “public sphere” when discussing the nature of law. The article focuses on the essence of the genetic method of learning and the nature of the historiographical situation in Russian legal science at the turn of the 20th century. For Kistyakovsky, the hermeneutical schema was of particular importance in the formation of the genetic method in Russian legal sociology. This alludes to the logical relationship between the reality of objective laws and the normative system of society – the social norms which form society. The framework of the genetic method gives rise to an understanding of law primarily through the study of the problems of the origins of law: the study of the nature of law which brings about its operationality. The problems of the origins of law were touched upon by the majority of the representatives of the Russian school of integrative legal consciousness (Maxim Kovalevsky, Sergey Muromtsev, Bogdan Kistyakovsky). On the one hand, contemporary discussion of the types of legal consciousness is characterized by an increased interest in the problem of generating a consistent integrative theory of legal consciousness. On the other hand, there is a lack of serious theoretical interest in the pragmatic and practical tradition of the study of law using the genetic method, as outlined in Russian jurisprudence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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