New Legal Tradition: Paradigms of Developments in Technology

This paper looks at the influence of the developments in technology on the evolution of the legal map of the world and the individual elements thereof through the prism of the philosophy of law, general theory of law, and comparative law. The analysis is based on the comparative legal and comparative historical methods. The author comes to the conclusion that the maxims of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have led to the emergence of a new legal tradition, and outlines the key characteristics of this tradition. The analysis of the aforementioned tradition is preceded by a look at the legal traditions already explored in the history of legal thought, the key position among which is occupied by the Western legal tradition. The “symptoms” of the new legal tradition described in the paper represent not only a certain stage in the development of global jurisprudence (albeit being at an initial phase), but also an element of the civilizational evolution of a universal social order. Like any previously non-actualized phenomenon, the new legal tradition does not only give new attributes and characteristics to the legal world, but also generates discussions about further paths of its own development. The final section of the paper deals with the problematic areas of the evolution of the new legal tradition.