Updating Scientific Methodology of Russian Constitutionalism (In the Context of Professor V.E. Chirkin Ideological Legacy)

On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Professor Veniamin E. Chirkin the paper discusses his extensive ideological legacy mainly from the perspective of solving perspective-predictive tasks facing Russian constitutional jurisprudence. Attention is focused on the significant potential contained in this legacy for changes in the scientific methodology of Russian constitutionalism in modern conditions, including issues related to the tools (conceptual and analytical approaches) of scientific knowledge, terminological, substantive, functional, institutional, personal and other characteristics of constitutionalism, the constitution, constitutional law. The author substantiates the defining role of the value-civilizational approach in constitutional jurisprudence, which allows revealing the prerequisites, patterns, and trends in the development of constitutional institutions in a specifically national socio-cultural context, in their inseparable connection with the formation and maintenance of a national constitutional identity. The value-based civilizational approach is not opposed, but is coupled with reasonable pragmatism and realism, the meaning of which is not to put constitutional law at the service of expediency, but to reveal it as the most appropriate form of ideological and normative expression of the spirit, way of life and destiny of the people. The logic of constitutional development based on traditional spiritual and moral values is justified by the introduction of the principle of dialogical continuity, which implies not the reproduction (preservation) of the past, but a constitutional dialogue with the past.