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  5. Legal obligations and their fulfillment in the context of modern digitalization: issues of ontology and epistemology

Almanac of law. Issue 17 (2026), pages 436–449.

DOI: 10.33663/2524-017X-2026-17-436-449

Suniehin S. О.
Legal obligations and their fulfillment in the context of modern digitalization: issues of ontology and epistemology

The article is devoted to the study of the features of the transformation of the ontological and epistemological aspects of legal obligations in the context of modern technological development. The emphasis is on the transformation of the value-normative context of legal obligations in the conditions of the comprehensive digitalization of social relations.

It is noted that an important characteristic of a legal obligation is its targeted nature, because its content is addressed to specific legal subjects who have the freedom to choose between lawful and unlawful behavior, that is, a legal obligation acts as an external requirement for a specific person, which can be fulfilled, ignored, or violated by him. In the traditional and generally accepted sense, legal obligation is deontic in nature, that is, it exists primarily as an ideal normative prescription, and not as an immanent property of a social or technical system. This means that legal obligation, like law in general, addresses a free individual and places the ethical burden of choice on him, because a person must internally perceive the corresponding prescription as fair and necessary for the common good. Therefore, the effectiveness of the fulfillment of legal obligations also directly depends on the extent to which its content resonates with the internal moral principles and rules of a person.

At the same time, in the conditions of the functioning of the global information society and the rapid development of various technologies, in particular digital and automated decision-making systems, artificial intelligence and distributed registries, there is a gradual transformation of the ontological status of legal obligation, which to a certain extent is already losing its corresponding normative origins and begins to function as an element of a technologically organized system of algorithms, which is associated with a gradual change in the «legal worldview» and the image of law under the influence of the practically comprehensive digitization of public life.

As a result, legal obligation gradually turns into an element of technocratic, rather than socio-cultural thinking with its reliance primarily on a certain system of normative coordinates, in particular legal, moral and religious. This, in turn, leads to the fact that legal obligation begins to gradually lose the traditional character of its understanding of an internally conscious, meaningful duty experienced by the subject of law, and is reduced to a formalized, technically conditioned legal fact, thus ceasing to be an act of fully conscious choice and transforming into a necessary element of the technological process.

As a result of research, the following conclusions are made:

  1. The ontological and epistemological aspect of the transformation of legal obligations in the conditions of the formation and development of a technocratic society indicates a qualitatively new stage in the evolution of law as a social regulator, within which such an obligation gradually loses the character of a normative duty, turns into a structural element of socio-technical reality and is carried out through the use of automated management of a specific technological infrastructure.
  2. The development of the institution of legal obligations in the context of the comprehensive technologization of social life requires overcoming the artificial dichotomy between the value-normative, socio-cultural nature of law as a social regulator and the technological nature of modern social management, in connection with which the digitalization of today’s communicative practices can be considered as a special, systemic form of implementing law, which requires strengthening the legal reflection of legal subjects when applying it.
  3. In the conditions of a modern technological society, a legal obligation achieves a high degree of its effectiveness, but at the same time loses its inherent normative and educational function, since the automation of the processes of its implementation actually eliminates the moment of personal choice, reduces the cognitive and volitional involvement of the relevant person and to a large extent depersonalizes legal responsibility for its failure to fulfill or improper fulfillment.

Keywords: legal obligation, execution, implementation of law, technology, digitalization, algorithm, law, freedom, automation, morality.

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Дата першого надходження рукопису до видання: 25.02.2026
Дата прийнятого до друку рукопису після рецензування: 09.04.2026
Дата публікації: 30.04.2026

     

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