Almanac of law. Issue 16 (2025), pages 427–432.
DOI: 10.33663/2524-017X-2025-16-427-432
Reznik A. B.
The influence of legal nihilism on the implementation of law
The article clarifies the main aspects of the influence of legal nihilism on the main forms of the implementation of law.
Legal consciousness is defined as a set of subjective elements that provide a reflection of legal reality, form an attitude towards law, determine value orientations regarding legal behavior, form a vision of the prospects and directions of the development of law.
It is noted that the subjective nature of the perception of law determines both different forms of manifestation of consciousness and their different levels. This determines the possibility of the emergence of various forms of deformations of legal consciousness, which are caused by a low level of legal knowledge and legal culture. One of the significant manifestations of deformations of legal consciousness is legal nihilism, which reflects the negative attitude of the subject to legal values, norms, views and ideals.
Clarification of the essence and nature of legal nihilism is associated with the need to study the deformation of legal consciousness as a phenomenon widespread in modern society. The deformation of legal consciousness causes a change in its state, is associated with a distorted reflection of legal reality and the formation of a distorted understanding of legal ideas, ideas, views, moods, experiences and emotions, which, ultimately, leads to a negative attitude towards law and disbelief in its social value.
Certain properties of the deformation of legal consciousness are identified, which will provide an opportunity to clarify the nature and essence of this phenomenon and to more deeply understand such a variety of it as legal nihilism.
It is emphasized that in modern general theoretical legal science there is no single definition of this concept. This is associated with the complexity of legal phenomena; the subjective nature of the process of knowledge of law; the peculiarity of the legal consciousness of subjects, which depends on the system of objective and subjective factors; the individual nature of assessments of legal reality and the dependence of legal nihilism on other types of deformations of legal consciousness.
Legal nihilism is defined as a type of deformation of legal consciousness, the essence of which is manifested in the non-recognition of law as an objective value, a negative attitude towards law and lawful behavior and is accompanied by confidence in the possibility of achieving positive legal results for the subject in the most convenient illegal way. We can talk about the positive or negative aspects of legal nihilism in the aspect of studying the result of its impact on legal reality.
Special attention is paid to determining the features of simple and complex forms of law implementation. The main aspects of the manifestation of legal nihilism in the process of using subjective rights, fulfilling legal obligations and complying with legal prohibitions are studied. Attention is drawn to the negative impact of legal nihilism on law enforcement. For this purpose, the features of elitist legal nihilism as a result of the deformation of the legal consciousness of representatives of the power elite at a specific historical stage of the development of society are analyzed.
Key words: law, legal consciousness, legal regulation, legal nihilism, implementation of legal norms, deformation, law, perception of law.
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