Reception and Extrapolation as Means of Formation and Transformation of State Legal Systems

The problem of this article is a scientific discussion on determining the place and role of law reception and extrapolation in the process of formation and transformation of state legal systems, with an emphasis on the comparative historical analysis of the Russian political and legal genesis. Purpose: to formulate the concept of the state legal system, to characterize it as a formal (corporeal) and meaningful (substantial) phenomenon, and to show the influence of reception and extrapolation methods on the processes of formation and transformation of the state legal system of the Russian Federation. Methods: methods of interdisciplinary synthesis and theoretical modeling are used to construct a model of the state legal system and determine the place of basic categories within it: state, law, crime. Methods of historical and comparative analysis allow us to identify formal characteristics (form of government, state structure, legal technique of law-making and law enforcement activities) of the Russian Empire, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, with their comparison in terms of the results of the impact of the reception and extrapolation of state and legal institutions from the “donor” system to the “recipient” system. Results: the article substantiates the expediency of introducing an integrative model of the state legal system into the conceptual apparatus of the theory of state and law; it shows the influence of borrowed state legal institutions on the processes of formation and transformation of the state legal system of the Russian Federation; it concludes that the priority (for Russia) is the extrapolation of foreign legal forms filled with content other than authentic.