Metatheory of the state and legal theses doctrines: the actualization of the problem

• Apolskу E.A.

  Rostov institute (branch) of the All-Russian State Justice University (RLA of the Ministry of justice of Russia)
  Rostov-on-Don. Russia
  Head of the department of theory and history of state and law; associate professor, PhD (law science)

Article is devoted to definition of problems and the prospects of general-theoretical scientific development of dissertation state and legal theses of the XIX – the beginnings of the 20th centuries and formation of a metatheory of the specified doctrines. As an object of a research the dissertations on state law defended at law departments of imperial Russian universities until 1917 are chosen. The metatheoretical approach is a base for considering the theory of state and legal theses doctrines. The article describes the problem of underestimation of the importance of state and legal theses doctrines existing today for development of jurisprudence in general and history of political and legal doctrines, in particular. The necessity of the analysis of subject and content of master’s and doctor’s theses of the pre-revolutionary scientists which will allow to define the priority and poorly developed fields of pre-revolutionary jurisprudence, to disclose regularities of formation and development of the state and legal doctrines submitted in legal dissertation researches of the Russian Empire, to reveal the results of researches formulated in the form of forms of scientific knowledge, to carry out their classification is proved. Arguments in favor of the necessity of further metatheoretical development of the state and legal doctrines presented in master and doctoral dissertations on jurisprudence of universities of the Russian Empire are given.

The problem of the lack of objective criteria for evaluating the results of modern dissertational research in the Russian Federation, whose solution can be the creation of an electronic database of forms of scientific knowledge, obtained in dissertations of the pre-revolutionary, soviet and post-soviet period, is separately indicated. Such a base will make it possible to successfully compare the available and newly obtained results of dissertational research, objectively assessing their novelty and originality.

Keywords: thesis, metatheoretical approach, the Russian empire, the university, the form of scientific knowledge, the criterion for determining the novelty.