The Culture of Lawmaking

A rapidly changing objective reality, together with social, political, and economic processes, creates an ongoing need to improve legal regulation both within established legal systems and in emerging fields of activity. Lawmaking today is in an especially active phase, reflecting societal changes and shaping a modern, responsive system for addressing both external and internal challenges. Against this backdrop, a distinctly pragmatic, utilitarian trend has emerged as the most direct route to achieving the goal: establishing legal regulation that is as effective and optimal as possible by setting objectively grounded, clear, and understandable rules of conduct for all legal actors. At the same time, building a modern, effective system of legal regulation is impossible without nurturing moral and legal values and promoting a high level of legal culture within society. Respect for the law is the highest expression of a society’s legal culture. The presence of a certain cultural code embedded in the nature of domestic law, and therefore in the foundation of lawmaking, must be a defining factor in shaping a new legal reality. A historical and national approach, a value-based narrative, spirituality, and humanism have always distinguished and characterized Russian culture as a whole, and legal culture in particular. What role does culture play in the modern lawmaking process, both as a culture of legal norms and as culture as a norm of behaviour? What is the cultural code at the heart of Russian lawmaking? Is an ideal balance of culture, morality, and law in legal regulation possible?