Homo Juridicus, a Legalized Society and the State in the Naturalness of Legal Reality. Review of the Study by P. P. Serkov: «Legal relationship. (Theory and Practice of Modern Legal Policy)». Moscow: Norma, 2023

According to its content, the new study presented by Professor P. P. Serkov goes far beyond its formal title, which means the focus on the place of legal relations in legal policy.

Like the ancient Roman commander Cato the Elder, who ended all his speeches in the Senate with the same phrase dedicated to the sad fate of Carthage, Professor P. P. Serkov ends any lengthy discussions about law, legal relations, legal policy, legal ideology, legal socialization, legal principles, morality, religion in one way or another with a conclusion about the effect of what appeared, in his opinion, in the pre-state era, the principle of equivalence, parity of subjective rights and obligations, which was justified in previous works.

The main features of legal research are the involvement of the methodology of other sciences (philosophy, political science and psychology), as well as the fact that legal policy, positive law around the world are evaluated («law sleeps») not directly, but indirectly--through an appeal to legal theory, which is criticized for focusing on the «artificiality of law».

The review of the original research draws attention to the extremes and contradictions in the author’s positions. In its constructive provisions, it fills both legal science and political science with new knowledge, justifying the need to reduce the inevitable distance between politics and law by taking into account the mechanisms of the emergence, development and completion of legal relations. In its polemical part, the monograph rightly warns legal science about the danger of moving in a circle, about the need for an adequate perception of the reality of being based on the achievements of other sciences to increase its efficiency.

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