Concise Reflections on the Identity and (Con)textuality of Law

The paper considers law both as a legal expression of social changes in society and, also, as an active factor in stimulating such changes. In terms of the cause-effect relationship between law and social changes, the role of law is distinct in each case. However, due to the close interdependence of law and social relations, it is hard, and often futile, to establish these ties. In any case, one cannot reduce law to a kind of “chamber of registration” of social transformations. By positioning itself as a text in relation to those who contributed to its formation, the law can maintain its dialogic rationality, opening itself to the awareness of external circumstances, both their justification and application, entering into dialogic relations with other, more or less normative conceptual systems with which it coexists and maintains a heuristic connection (following the example of the concept of justice). At the same time, the law does not lose its humanity-based identity, which consists both in confronting the disorder manifested in the process of social change, and in revealing itself in the form of a picture of the world, the formation of which it contributes, to interpret these ideas and, thus, to preserve its external character in relation to them and in dialogue with them. The law cannot be considered outside the very different context of its existence and operation, so the article proposes a contextual approach to law: within such a paradigm, the context is no longer external to law; he is unanimous with him; it is no longer opposed to the law. Moreover, it becomes its fundamental principle. However, contextuality cannot exist separately from the textuality of law simply because the latter constitutes the very core of contextuality, at least in law.