Legal culture and legal competence: to the question of the correlation between concepts

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is due to the contradiction between the widespread use of the concepts of legal culture and legal competency in pedagogical and legal theory, on the one hand, and insufficiently substantiated understanding of the role and place of these concepts in the conceptual and terminological apparatus of pedagogy, due to the undeveloped question of their correlation. The purpose of the study was to identify the correlation between the concepts of legal culture and legal competency. To achieve it, a meta-analysis of publications on the topic was carried out (a total of 21 papers (articles, monographs and dissertations) devoted to the problem under study were analyzed.

Based on the analysis of scientific literature, the article reveals the essence and content of the concepts of legal culture and legal competency. The correlation of these concepts is substantiated. It is shown that a common feature for them is the possession by a personality of a certain amount of knowledge in the field of law, skills and certain skills and abilities in applying this knowledge in activities and communication.

The main features by which these concepts differ are identified: the scope of the concept (the concept of "legal culture" is objectively wider, since it describes the level and quality of legal knowledge and legal values at the levels of the state, society, individual; the concept of "legal competency" is purely personal characteristic, expressed in the totality of the competencies of the individual in the legal field); the degree of coverage of the human life cycle (legal culture develops at the stages of general, professional and various forms of additional education, in the system of non-formal and informal education; legal competency – mainly at the stage of vocational training and education and subsequent professional activity); the nature of manifestation in activity (legal competency is always manifested through the implementation of actions in a particular professional or life situation; legal culture as a social phenomenon can also function in a passive form – in the form of laws, rules, etc.).