The nature of the triad «law – morality – state»: features of correlation in the Russian doctrine

Abstract

The correlation of law, morality and the state in Russian legal thought forms not a binary but a three-part construction, which distinguishes it from the classical European dichotomy of external and internal regulation. The divergence between the dogmatic separation of law and morality and the integrative tradition that grounds law in a moral foundation has so far received no agreed resolution in the scholarship, while the constitutionalisation of traditional spiritual and moral values has given the problem a normative sharpness. The aim of the study is to establish how exactly the national doctrine builds the connection of the three elements of the triad and what role the state plays within that connection. The formal-legal, comparative-legal and historical-legal methods are applied, together with the systemic and teleological interpretation of constitutional norms and acts of strategic planning. A reconstruction of the polemic between B.N. Chicherin and V.S. Solovyov, compared with the operative provisions of Articles 67.1 and 75.1 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and of the Foundations of state policy for preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, shows that the state in the Russian construction acts not as an external arbiter of the pair «law – morality» but as its constitutive link, assuming the protection of the moral foundation of the legal order. The fixing of moral categories in the text of the basic law shifts them from the sphere of a doctrinal ideal into the plane of legally relevant guidelines of interpretation, which at once strengthens the axiological coherence of the legal order and generates the risk of eroding the autonomy of law. The distinction between value-guidelines and directly applicable moral norms serves as the condition under which the three-part construction retains both its moral rootedness and its legal certainty.