Principle of historism in law and legal research

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Purpose. The purpose of the publication is to highlight the main approaches to understanding the meaning of historicism or the principle of historicism, as well as to determine its role in law in general and historical and legal research in particular. Method. The methodological basis of the study was a set of general scientific, special scientific and historical methods, as well as the principles of historicism and objectivity. Results. It is established that the dreamer of the classical concept of historicism was a German scientist of the XVIII century. F. Schlegel, who proposed to abandon the then established approach that all historical processes in a particular field of science took place consistently and typically, but pointed out that everything depends on the «personality» that influences the process or carries it out, or social or other circumstances in which this process develops. Well-known Ukrainian scholars who developed the theoretical content of the principle of historicism were M. Kovalevsky and S. Dnistryansky. The authors of the publication propose to consider the principle of historicism in a narrow and broad sense. In a narrow sense, the principle of historicism is the process of understanding and interpreting legal norms under the influence of historical, social or political factors. In a broad sense, it is a form of legal research that considers the process of legal decision-making as a product of political, social and historical conditions. Scientific novelty. It is established that the formation of the principle of historicism took place in the middle of the XIX century. and related to the development of the historical school of law. The key to the process of understanding and applying the principle of historicism is determined by the objective appeal to the natural social, political, economic and even cultural processes that influenced the law in a particular historical epoch. The role of the scientist in this process should not be limited to the presentation of material on the basis of a chronological approach, just as one should not associate the principle of historicism with the principle of historicism. It has been established that in modern Ukrainian legal science there is a departure from Soviet ideologues, who associated the principle of historicism with the principle of partisanship and gave it exceptional dialectical features. Practical significance. The results of the research can be used in further historical and legal research and theoretical and legal research.