Paradigm crisis of modern Russian juridical science: Loss of normative unity

Abstract

In this article the authors analyze the theoretical and methodological bases of modern Russian juridical science as a part of study theoretical principles of humanities as science. The article presents an attempt to apply the concept of T. Kuhn’s scientifical paradigm to the study of the current state of juridical science, norms, and principles of the scientific community of scholars in law. The crisis in science is primarily reflected in the absence of the above-mentioned theoretical and methodological unity at the scientific community. To confirm this idea, the authors studied the content of objects of research and the methodology of graduate thesis in law in 2019. Based on the results of their own research, the authors found that in most graduate theses, the object is formulated using the expression “social relations”. It is borrowed from the theoretical foundations of juridical science of the Soviet period and is completely unrelated to the analysis of class relations, representing a stable and meaningless language stamp. Graduate theses in law have an excessive tendency to use sociological surveys conducted at a low scientific level. There is also a situation of “methodological chaos” — the absence of a core of proper juridical methods, which calls into question the specifics of juridical science. The authors come to the conclusion about the “crisis of reproducibility” of the results of juridical research, as well as the prevailing trend of reducing the methodology to the methodics. Most scholars in their graduate thesis follow an empirical path, basing their conclusions not on a priori paradigmatic assumptions, but on situational experimental data. A negative consequence of the paradigm crisis of modern Russian juridical science is the institutionalization of non-normativity and the process of reproduction of scientific anomie. A negative valuenormative convention is being formed in the paradigm crisis.