On the validity of law foundations, modern understanding of the law and scientific rationality of the legal science in the digital age

Puchkov Vladislav Olegovich, Puchkov Oleg Aleksandrovich

The study addresses the problem of the foundations of the validity of law in the context of the actual types of the understanding of the law and scientific rationali-ty. The article concludes the two fundamentally different ontological images of law (i.e. empirically-objectivist in classical understanding of the law and ideally-subjectivist in postclassical one) to be represented in modern legal theory. The authors justifies that none of these approaches is able to ensure the virtual rela-tions specific’s comprehension to the full extent. Either the article argues thesis that the types of scientific rationality may substantiate the methodological specif-ics of the legal science in the digital age. The authors attempts to reconstruct the formation of the law in the situation of the insufficient positive legal regulation of the social relations’ digital sphere. The study finds the law to take shape at the level of understanding as the representation of the objective and available claims, requirements of the relevant conduct and its implications. Consequently the au-thors come to conclusion that the foundation of the validity of law in the digital era is not represented by the positive law only, but by the understanding of the social relation’s legal character either.

Keywords:law, validity of law, digital age, understanding of the law, scientific rationality, virtual space, methodology.