Classification of Legal Sciences and the Role of the Theory of State and Law in Shaping a Lawyer’s Legal Culture

The article examines approaches to the classification of legal sciences and substantiates the place of the Theory of State and Law as a foundational discipline that ensures the conceptual unity of jurisprudence and provides methodological guidance for legal analysis. It is shown that, despite differences in terminology, prevailing classification models converge on a common result: the general-theoretical level supplies a framework for sectoral and applied legal disciplines, maintains coherence in legal language and criteria of legal qualification, and contributes to shaping a lawyer’s legal culture as the capacity to assess state-and-law phenomena systematically and to relate legal rules to the underlying principles of legal regulation. The article further notes that diminishing the role of general-theoretical training in legal education increases the risk of fragmentation of legal knowledge and a shift toward procedural skills at the expense of conceptual reasoning, which underscores the need to preserve the Theory of State and Law as a core element of legal education.