Legal consciousness and legal culture: essential characteristics and problems of formation

The authors deal with the definitions of legal consciousness and legal culture, their structure and functions of legal culture. Legal consciousness is considered as an element of legal culture, a special form of consciousness and the most important characteristic of the legal life of a person and society. The authors examine the influence of legal culture and legal consciousness on various spheres of public life of society and individual social groups. Particular attention is paid to the problems arising from the insufficient level of legal consciousness, its existence in the form of legal nihilism and legal idealism. The concepts of «legal culture» and «legal consciousness» are compared, approaches to the types and forms of legal culture are analyzed. The attention is focused on the types of legal consciousness deformation: legal nihilism and legal idealism. The authors consider in detail such aspects as the forms of legal nihilism of young people and the factors hindering the increase in the level of legal culture and legal awareness of the younger generation. The study was aimed at systematizing the problems that young people face when searching for legal information. It was conducted among students of the Institute of Justice of Baikal State University (Irkutsk). The study was implemented by means of a quantitative approach using the questionnaire method. The authors offer recommendations that can help increase and maintain a high level of legal consciousness of the population.