The Evolution of the Phenomenon of Law in the Context of Its External Forms and Internal Content

Employing both dialectical and phenomenological approaches, the article delves into the origins of the phenomenon of law and traces the evolution of its external forms and internal (semantic) content. It distinguishes four historical stages in the evolution of law: the genesis of this phenomenon, the emergence of ancient laws, the positivization of law in the 18^th – early 19^th centuries, and the transformation of modern law into an objective management mechanism of society. It is argued that the dialectical laws (principles) governing the movement of matter serve as the methods of evolution of the phenomenon of law since the historical stages of its development unfolded in accordance with them. Each stage transcends into the next through a dialectical leap in development, becoming the highest form of movement of the “body” of law (corpus juris) in relation to the previous one. Law originates from a less organized form, manifesting as justice – a characteristic of human behavior and the foundational regulator underlying sociogenesis. The empirical birth of the phenomenon of law occurs with the advent of ancient written laws. This process involves the participation of official authorities who extract the concept of the legal from social relations and appropriate it for self-constitution and implementation. At the next development stage, law becomes positive, turning into a system of special interpretative knowledge – a conditional (hypothetical) reality. Equity is transformed into the concept of social justice and the concept of compliance with the law. Law is identified with legislation, excluding all other possible forms of manifestation and acquiring the sign of a necessary connection with the state as its creator. The final stage reflects the current state of law, when its content as a regulator expands through integration with information and communication technologies and the anthroposphere. Law becomes a conduit of the hypothetical sphere of reason and an objective management mechanism of society. The author concludes, that the existence of law is paradoxical: while being a conditional (hypothetical) reality, law is always at least a minimum of justice, making its application to reality as a regulator not a mere coincidence. 

Keywords: essence of law, existence (location) of law, justice, genesis of law, stages of law development, ways of law evolution, dialectical laws of movement of matter, ontology of law