Legal customs and legal traditions in the formation of spiritual and moral values in the aspect of nature conservation

Abstract

The relationship between normative and value-based regulators of behaviour remains an unresolved question of the general theory of law, and the constitutional entrenchment of traditional spiritual and moral values following the 2020 amendments has given it practical urgency. The categories of legal custom and legal tradition are frequently conflated in Russian legal doctrine, which distorts the understanding of their legal force and of their role in value-based regulation. The aim of the study is to establish how legal custom and legal tradition participate in the formation of spiritual and moral values. The formal-legal, comparative-legal and historical-legal methods are applied, together with systematic and teleological interpretation of the provisions of the Constitution, Article 5 of the Civil Code and the Fundamentals of State Policy for Preserving and Strengthening Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values. It is established that legal custom acts as a source of law of subsidiary effect that translates a value into reproducible behaviour, whereas legal tradition ensures the continuity of value content by transmitting a model of attitude towards the norm rather than the norm itself. The formation of values by legal means proceeds reciprocally: the norm relies on an established custom, while a recognised custom acquires stability; a mismatch between these movements produces the declarative character of value provisions. Distinguishing custom as a source of law from tradition as a channel of continuity clarifies which mechanism is engaged when a particular value is entrenched and reduces the risk of equating the stability of a tradition with the binding force of a norm.