Legal reflection as the characteristic of legal thinking

The authors analyze the problem of legal thinking as a legal concept and as a special phenomenon of legal reality. The definition, special features and the essence of legal thinking, its delimitation from other types of thinking are revealed in the paper. The use of theoretical knowledge obtained in the framework of general psychology for the study of legal thinking is justified. Besides, the authors reveal the limitation of expressed in the scientific literature definitions of the concept of legal thinking, stating that the subject and method of thinking are necessary, but insufficient criteria in order to formulate a scientific definition. It’s proposed to consider the category of legal reflection as an essential attribute of legal thinking.