Law and Order: Historical and Legal Justification and Current Levels

This article offers a historical and legal justification for the concept of legal order and identifies its contemporary levels. Based on a historical, legal, and comparative legal analysis, the evolution of the concept of legal order in the research of scholars of the Soviet and post- Soviet periods is examined. A conclusion is drawn about the diversity of understandings of legal order in legal science. General theoretical and sectoral approaches to understanding legal order are highlighted, and options for positioning legal order as social relations themselves, their state, mandatory requirements, the principle of regulation and law enforcement, and a reflection of the will of the legislator are identified. The historical analysis allows us to conclude that there are levels of scientific understanding of legal order from the perspective of the historical stage of state building. The existence of levels of understanding of legal order related to measures of administrative coercion, state control, and oversight as means of ensuring legal order is substantiated. It is concluded that all the identified and other possible levels of understanding the legal order can be combined into a holistic, comprehensive theory of the legal order, the fundamental element of which is the public legal order. In modern conditions, such a theory is intended to facilitate the optimization of both state mechanisms and models of interaction between citizens and organizations and public authorities.