Legal Mentality as the Foundation of Legal Consciousness and Legal Culture

This article examines legal mentality as an underlying foundation of legal consciousness and legal culture, shaping stable patterns of perceiving law, trusting legal institutions, and adopting prevailing models of lawful conduct within society. The study reviews key approaches in Russian legal doctrine to the conceptualization of mental attitudes in the legal sphere and substantiates their importance for legal certainty, predictability of law enforcement, and the maintenance of public order. It is shown that legal mentality encompasses value orientations, legal expectations, and internal behavioral directives operating at both the reflective and deep-seated levels, which explains its relative stability and the limited effectiveness of rapid transformation efforts. Particular attention is given to the relationship between moral premises and formal legal requirements, as well as to the role of historical and cultural factors in shaping perceptions of legality and justice. These considerations are relevant to aligning private interests with the state’s public functions within the national legal order, including in contexts involving interaction with international regulatory mechanisms; in this connection, procedural guarantees and accountability grounded in conscience are emphasized.