Legal Custom: Concept, Features, Role in the Regulation of Public Legal Relations

The purpose of the article is to explore the properties of legal custom, formulating its definition, determining the role and significance for regulating public legal relations. Based on various methods of scientific knowledge of legal reality (dialectical-materialistic as universal, as well as general and private scientific), a systematic analysis of the signs characterizing legal custom was carried out, allowing to recognize its “autonomy” in the mechanism of legal regulation of social relations; the author’s understanding of this form of external expression of law, its features are emphasized, in particular, such as flexibility, dynamism. It was concluded that the unique features of legal custom reflect its enormous potential as a form of expression not only of traditionally principles and norms of private, but also of public law. According to the author, when resolving disputes, the courts do not fix, do not consolidate the legal custom, they resolve the dispute between the subjects of the legal relationship that arose on the basis of the existing legal custom. It is justified that the state should not and cannot regulate absolutely all public relations. The process of forming legal customs is continuous in time. With the help of this form of law, society consolidates and transmits from generation to generation the accepted social values.