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On the Simplified Models of Legal Understanding for Teaching Legal Knowledge in Russia
Authors: Dmitry A. Kirillov, Ekaterina G. Sechenova
Number of views: 156
The article discusses the approach to ensuring the practical focus of higher legal education under the conditions when a significant part of legal provisions "do not operate". For this, the the authors of the article propose using simplified models of legal understanding in the educational process. In developing these models, the authors of the article took into account the following circumstances. The teaching of legal disciplines in Russian universities is more and more complicated every year due to an increase in the number of laws that belong to the category of “acting” only formally, and therefore are not sources of law in the formal sense. Until about 2008, the teacher used the universal rule about the gap between the “static” form and the “dynamic” content. To explain the phenomenon of "unworking" laws such approach was didactically sufficient and methodologically correct. This rule indicated the need for the state to gradually eliminate obsolete laws from the legal space. However, in the last decade such an explanation has obviously become insufficient. So, by 2008, for a “median” practicing Russian lawyer, questions of whether or not this or that law worked in a particular legal situation were put forward as relevant; if the law works, then what “rule" should be applied instead of it to solve a legal problem. Accordingly, in the didactic aspect, a problem arose – how to restructure the teaching of legal disciplines if there are so many laws that are not sources of law (“do not work”). There are many concepts of legal understanding, from the positions of which one can explain the current state of things. However, most of them are difficult for students. The authors of the article propose a simplified model of legal understanding. It distinguishes three blocks - non-working laws, working laws, as well as the rules applied instead of non-working laws. For didactic purposes the authors of the article suggest to apply a differential use of such concepts as "legal law", "law", "feigned legal fact", "feigned legal space" depending on the audience's level of competence. A differentiated approach to groups of students with different levels of legal training also seems reasonable.