Types of Legal Consciousness in Jurisprudence and their Possible Deformation

Introduction. Legal consciousness, being a part of national legal system of the state, has a great impact on lawmaking and law enforcement, and is prerequisite for the legal behavior of citizens. The goal is to specify the types of legal consciousness in domestic jurisprudence. Materials, Results and Discussion. Theoretical concepts and developments made by domestic law scholars in the field of legal consciousness were employed. A system of methods for studying legal phenomena was applied. Under consideration are such types of legal consciousness, from the view of its subjects (bearers), as individual, group, mass and social; and levels of legal consciousness — common, professional and scientific. It is clarified that mass legal consciousness is a kind of group consciousness, typical for dynamic social groups of the population. The focus is made on the professional deformation of legal consciousness of law enforcement subjects of the Internal Affairs’ bodies in various forms of its manifestation. Conclusions. Mass legal consciousness is not specified as a separate type, but rather as a group legal consciousness of dynamic social groups of the population. From the view of legal consciousness it is reasonable to consider not professional legal consciousness, but the practical one, professional deformations in their different forms taken into account.