Cyclicality as a modern paradigm of comprehending legal reality
Authors: Kopytkov Vladyslav 
Published: March 2020

The work is dedicated to the newest approach in legal science, the phenomenon of cyclicality. Cyclicality is a long-standing philosophical idea and concept that is practised in various scientific fields. To become a scientific theory and paradigm, it has gone a long evolutionary way from antiquity to modernity. The cyclical approach is in the "armament" of many sciences. It provides scientists with a whole methodological basis for scientific research, a completely different vision of the processes occurring in various spheres of human life. Unfortunately, modern jurisprudence still pays little attention to the phenomenon of cyclicality, its study in law. However, some developments of scientists indicate a growing interest to these issues. For example, Yu. A. Tikhomirov notes that the cyclical approach to the development of law allows us to abandon the mechanistic attitude to it and simplified assessments on the one hand, from a purely "text" perception of law as a set of legal acts that come in place of each other - on the other hand. With its help, there is an opportunity to reveal, understand and consciously influence all stages of life of both public and private law. To see their connections and crossovers, to identify the hidden facets of law. The concept of cyclicality has also become the basis for the "theory of constitutional cycles" by A.N. Medushevsky, who identifies evolutionary and revolutionary models of constitutional cycling, various models of constitutional cycles in post-socialist countries, and assesses exit strategies. He comes to the main conclusion that the cyclicality is traced in the constitutional development of different countries of the world, in particular, it is manifested in the laws of adoption and modification of the constitution.

Due to cyclicality, we are able to analyze the past, model the future, trace the dynamics of any legal phenomena and processes. On the example of the "legislative cycle", we see that cyclicality can be both a form of legislative process and a methodological tool for legislative activity. Through the category of "life cycles" of law, the social, "living" nature of law is manifested, its dynamic essence is revealed. The cycle extends the conceptual and categorical apparatus of theoretical jurisprudence. This approach is also important in the study of deterministic and bifurcation processes in law. The interdisciplinary, integrative nature of the doctrine of cyclicality allows extrapolating into the sphere of modern jurisprudence some knowledge and developments in other sciences, in particular, economics and politics.

All this suggests that the phenomenon of cyclicality is important in the process of studying the legal reality, in the process of learning it. Both the paradigm and the methodological basis of cyclicality can play a significant role in changing the quality of law. We also emphasize that today there are already substantial developments in the law, which uses the cyclical approach, however, these are only "first swallows". The theoretical and methodological potential of this approach for general theoretical and applied jurisprudence is only beginning to be discovered by researchers. It is possible to express confidence that addressing these issues by interested specialists will be useful to both science and society.