Collegialityas a characteristic of legal culture of modern society

Introduction. Transmission of the system of social values through law, the demand for the effective functioning of legal institutions, the need for legal communication in a particular society and the global community determine the requirement for the development of legal culture. The main scientific goal is to develop criteria for evaluation of legal culture of modern society. The social nature of law involves the issues of spiritual and cultural development of society. The presented approach is predicated on the recognition of the national character of law as a social regulator of social relations, and the allocation of historically formed types of social regulation system as a factor in the identification of the national legal system. The description of social and legal reality helps to discern the peculiarities of law functioning within the national cultural space, and to ascertain the qualitative parameters of legal culture in society. Methods. The universal dialectical method and the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete; general scientific logical methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalisation, as well as the sociological method; and special methods of legal research – formal-legal and historical-legal. Results. The directions of research on collegiality in legal discourse are outlined. It also highlights some problematic aspects in discussing the issues of collegiality, which are determined by changes in social reality. New approaches to the understanding of law, changes in legal reality and current deformations of legal awareness are considered. The importance of collegiality for the description of legal culture is established on the basis of a broad understanding of law as a unity of formalised law, legal awareness and legal relations. The position on the role of collegiality in description of the development of legal culture in Belarusian society is substantiated. At the individual level, collegiality is manifested in the mental characteristics of Belarusians. In the public sphere, in the historical perspective and in the modern conditions, collegiality is characterised by the legal tradition of the functioning of the institute of people's representation.