Legal culture and legal tradition in their categorial correlation and understanting

Modern approaches to the understanding of scientific categories of “culture”, “legal culture” and “legal tradition” are reviewed in the article. On the basis of analysis of the works by many scholars in which the problems of legal culture are investigated, the authors of the article propose their definition of the legal culture as a system of legal norms, values, institutions, statuses and forms, as a whole functioning as social and legal orientation of people and the whole society in the processes of lawmaking and realisation of law, providing the civilisation of law. The legal tradition is perceived by the authors of the article as a system of connections of the present with the past which are reproduced within the boundaries of the corresponding legal culture.