Legal Policy is a rather new direction in Legal Sciences. This is the efforts of a state and civil society to transform legal mechanism of the state and all legal life. Among the actors of Legal Policy in Russia are the President, the Parliament, the Government, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, the institutions of civil society, etc.
Legal Policy has become important thanks to extreme complexities of the post modernizing society. Our society beginning with the 1980’s has demanded much more farsighted strategic policy under globalization, erosion of state sovereignty, appearance of new actors such as transnational monopolies and international non-commercial organizations. More differentiated and flexible civil society is waiting that its opinion is to be taken into account more fully. Much strain upon law life under information revolution stimulates systematization of law.
So all of the challenges of the post modernization epoch (see scheme 1) lead to coordinated, much sophisticated policy concerning law innovations. This policy aims at forecasting of post modernization challenges and ways of adaptation to them.
In Russia problems of legal policy started to be studied by Saratov branch of the Institute of State and Law of Russian Academy of Sciences. The Lectures and monographs has been published [1]. The concept of Legal Policy up to 2020 has been prepared [2]. Special magazine “Legal Policy and Legal Life” stimulates further research work. But how to make Legal Policy more effective?
It’s clear that new academic discipline and new sphere of research must be based upon some principles. The first among them is realism which contrasts with dogmatism, politically customary illusions. For example, is the court system the best among branches of power? Usually they say that it is, that the courts are the most unbiased organs.
But in the real life it depends upon concrete judges and effectiveness of division of powers in concrete state. The second principle is dynamism.
