Current Meanings of the Legal Culture Concept and the Question of Truth Regarding its Elements

Abstract

The article introduces and approach of the philosophical concept of legal culture from the perspective of a global vision on the structure and evolution of society as a whole, of the legal life as part of it. In this context, the underlined idea is that the sphere of legal culture contains, in addition to the knowledge of law - the information from the field of legal sciences, elements of common knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, mentalities, legal norms, traditions, the active customs in the operation and enforcement of laws, the functioning mechanisms of state institutions in connection with the behaviour of social action agents: natural persons and legal persons. The anatomy of the legal culture is analyzed, highlighting the idea that its core is the legal knowledge, the scientific information in the field of law, which contains truthful and verified assertions. The article questions the truth of the components of legal culture, starting from the premise that judicial systems that violate the truth are incapable of producing justice. The act of justice is guided entirely by the truth, by truthful information. The achievement of justice and equity in society, the efficient functioning of the judiciary depends, not as much on the level of development of legal knowledge, the law sciences, but on the unity and functional coherence of the legal culture subsystem in its entirety.

Keywords

• culture; legal values; system of law; judicial truth; justice