Law as the Art of Conscience and Patriotism: The Ideological Legacy of Valery V. Lazarev

The article is devoted to understanding the scientific legacy of the outstanding jurist Valery V. Lazarev. This understanding is based on the concept of law as the art of conscience and patriotism, uniting and concentrating the essence of his work. The focus is on Lazarev’s understanding of truth, which integrates a moral ideal (“the conscience of the people”) and social responsibility that goes back to serving the Fatherland. From these positions, some of the main aspects of Lazarev’s views are discussed, including the integrative definition of law, interpreted as a dynamic, “living” system capable of adapting to social change (which is illustrated by the original metaphor of the engineering design of buildings in an earthquake‑prone area); the principle of complementarity of Niels Bohr in an application to jurisprudence, which allows us to consider legal contradictions in a natural, positive and evolutionary way; a legal memology that enriches the methodological and regulatory apparatus of jurisprudence with interdisciplinary opportunities to fight for sovereign statehood and truth in modern conditions. As a result, a conclusion is drawn about the integrity of Lazarev’s scientific system, where law manifests itself as a culturally rooted tool for serving social justice and a decent future for Russia. The chosen research perspective allowed us to present a new expression of the key problems of modern jurisprudence, the teachings of the state and law in their correlation with the actively changing socio‑political reality in a multipolar world, unthinkable outside of legal regulation. In order to discuss the general problems of the modern theory of state and law, the understanding of law as the art of conscience and patriotism is presented. This projection of legal thinking allows us to discuss the multilevel meanings of law, clarifying ideas about its functions.