Legal heritage and legal tradition – on the issue of correlation

Abstract

Increased interest in the study of legal heritage and legal traditions as a factor in the stability of the legal system is determinedby the crisis of Ukrainian legal reality, which forces both scholars and legislators to think about finding ways to update Ukrainian law,the effectiveness of the national legal system.The purpose of this theoretical and legal study is to analyze the relationship between two legal categories – legal heritage andlegal tradition. Identification of common and distinctive features.The article analyzes the definitions of the concept of legal heritage and legal traditions, namely: legal heritage is a set of spiritual,historically stable ties, relations, results of legal activity, which ensure the translation and acceptance of past legal experience, as wellas provides the orientation of people’s lives to strengthen historical and legal values; legal traditions reproducing the content-formingprinciples of law, which provide the tradition and perception of previous legal experience, as well as the orientation of legal reality tostrengthen, restore the legal heritage. 
 It should be noted that the legal heritage is largely defined as the embodiment of a tradition, the transmission of which contributesto the meaning of the past and present. If we consider the legal heritage based on its historical and cultural interpretation, we can seethe following meanings: «leaving a legal footprint», «finding a legal footprint», «movement on the legal footprint», «legal footprint ofancestors». Thus, what leaves its mark for many years, as a rule, is of special value, which means that it went beyond the everyday,mundane and became timeless.The legal heritage expresses the historical movement of the legal system. On the positive side, the legal heritage is understoodas certain connections, interactions that take place within the legal culture, the legal system. «Any legal system is based on the legalheritage and at the same time creates it. It is an indicator of legal culture that is part of a particular legal system as an integral elementof its ideological subsystem». The concept of the legal heritage of nations is a logical reflection at the national level of the concept ofworld legal heritage.Tradition preserves the legal system, ensures its qualitative originality, self-reproduction, self-identity in history. Tradition, understoodas cultural imitation and heritage, appears as the life force of culture, as a mechanism for preserving and reproducing culturalconstants.