The Concept and Content of Legal Liberalism

Abstract

The article examines the peculiarities of the concept and content of legal liberalism as a key ideology for modern legal systems. The author analyzes the general concept of liberalism and distinguishes its content: limited capabilities of the market as the sole regulator of economic and social relations, recognition of the need to strengthen the regulatory role of the State, emphasis on the issues of equality and justice as conditions for free development of each individual and ensuring social stability. In the philosophical and legal dimension liberalism is a moral and intellectual orientation to values such as humanity and freedom and is associated with the development of institutional and legal conditions for ensuring individual freedom.
It is found that the elements of liberalism include individualism, individual freedom, reason, equality, tolerance, social consent and constitutionalism. At the same time, among the most important features of modern liberalism, legal scholars identify the following: preservation and protection of natural human rights, contractual nature of relations between an individual and the state, priority of civil liberties over political, legal and moral norms, its adaptation to historical, national and cultural conditions, constitutional restriction of the state’s influence on the economy and its interference in this area. It is characterized by pragmatism, mercantilism, rationalism, consensus building and consensus seeking, improvement of social conditions for reform, charity and philanthropy.
The author defines legal liberalism as a political and legal theory, a type of liberalism based on the concepts of freedom (in negative and positive aspects; as a principle of law), equality (formal equality; equality of opportunity with overcoming discrimination and social inequality through law), human rights as a moral standard of modern society with their proper legal support, democracy (including freedom, equality of opportunity, democracy, individual autonomy, constitutionalism, public association), the rule of law (as a comprehensive legal principle with real dominance of law over political power) in combination with the concept of the rule of law.