Court and legal proceedings through the prism of the theory of mentality

Abstract

The Article is devoted to the study of the deterministic influence of the mental guidelines of the community and the realities of everyday life on the forms and historical modifications of the court and legal proceedings. Attention is focused on the need for a comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of specific forms of legal proceedings, since each of them is an objectification of the mental foundations of the community. It is shown that the consideration of legal phenomena and processes from the standpoint of the theory of mentality within the limits of domestic jurisprudence is not widespread, although this issue was relevant for the social sciences in the second half of the 20th century. The theory of mentality in the context of legal research can be considered as one of the methodological techniques of socio-cultural anthropology of law (closely related to the theory of everyday life). Achieving this goal became possible as a result of using modern, post-non-classical methodology, the tools of which allow to comprehensively explore legal phenomena and processes and focus on their deep foundations, which for a long time were considered not belonging to the objects of scientific study (everyday life, mental guidelines, stereotypes, signsymbolic sphere). It is demonstrated that a separate culture (in our case, European) is characterized by its inherent deep mental foundations, which are objectified in all spheres of social life, including legal ones. The modern court as a state institution and legal proceedings as a process of administering justice within the European cultural area are largely shaped by mental guidelines that combine a number of ancient ideas about the structure of the social world (proportionality and balance), Christian beliefs (equality), basic liberal values (freedom, justice). It has been proved that any modernization and reform processes in the field of court and legal proceedings will be effective only if they correspond to the mental guidelines of the community.