К ВОПРОСУ СТАНОВЛЕНИЯ ПОНЯТИЯ «ЮРИДИЧЕСКАЯ КОНСТРУКЦИЯ»: МЕТОДОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

The article contends that clarifying the concept of “legal construction” resolves key methodological impasses in dogmatic and sociological jurisprudence, and supports recognizing the method of legal constructions as an autonomous approach to law, alongside dogmatics and legal sociology. The work begins by noting that, despite extensive literature, legal science still lacks clear answers regarding what a legal construction is, how it functions, and the principles on which it operates. This deadlock is attributed to both the complexity of the subject and the limitations of prevailing paradigms: legal positivism, with its focus on the norm of law, and sociological approaches, which shift attention from normative texts to social relations. The author traces the development from Roman casuistry, through medieval glossators and the dogmatic paradigm of codification, to legal positivism and its subsequent crisis. It is demonstrated that the positivist identification of law with statutory norms and of legal science with the description of normative acts proved logically inconsistent, directing research either towards policy-oriented sociological jurisprudence (including law and economics) or discursive-communicative theories. A central thesis is the polysemy of “norm of law” and the necessity of distinguishing norms of law from norms of statute, as well as normative statements from rules of conduct that guide actors. The article also criticizes the traditional concept of “legal relationship” as a real ontological link. Against this background, the author reinterprets legal constructions as structural units of legal culture that precede and organize normative material, rather than being deduced from it. Drawing on R. von Jhering’s idea of the “juridical body”, legal constructions are presented as systemic complexes whose elements (such as powers within ownership) gain meaning only within the whole and differ when transplanted into other constructions. The article claims that legal constructions form a “central layer” of legal matter, mediating between abstract norms and concrete legal situations, and providing the true substrate of legal content. A construction becomes a legal “substance” when a juridical fact – above all, the will of a private-law subject – acts as its centre, turning a structurally defined scheme into an operative legal entity subject to interpretation. On this basis, the author concludes that the method of legal constructions constitutes an independent vector of legal research that complements, but is not reducible to, dogmatics or sociology of law. This method allows legal science to overcome methodological monism and to integrate structural analysis with attention to legal practice.