LEX RUSSICA THE THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF LAW Y.A. Vedeneeva* THE THEORY OF LAW: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TOPIC Abstract. <...> The article is devoted to one of the fundamental topics of the science of law, connected with the doctrinal and institutional practices of its composition and development; to a certain extent it may be regarded as a remark to the article «Legal Science: Its Present Condition, Challenges and Prospects (the Theoretician’s Reflections)» by professor Lazarev V.V. («Lex Russica», 2013. № 2). <...> The actual topic of the research is preconditioned by the urgent need of expanding of the potential circle of the grounds for epistemological curves in the development of the science of law in general and the theory of state in particular. <...> The introduction of such categories as «legal text» and «legal language» into the realm of the science of law has renewed and changed the epistemological prospect in the development of the legal theory itself. <...> These general notions actually accumulate all the possible revelations of the concept of the science of law — its ontology and axiology. <...> Key words: the science of law, theory of law, legal ontology, epistemological curve, legal concept, legal language, legal communication, self-reflection, conceptual core, linguistic curve (approach), meta-theory. <...> T he classical idea of the science of law is viewed as a unified body of legal disciplines the classification of which is based upon the diversification of the branches of law. <...> The scholars respectively single out the science of constitutional, civil, administrative law and other scientific disciplines. <...> Each of them works out its own aspect of the legal reality, formulating their proper subject and scope of investigation, creating its own tools and devices. <...> The theory of state and law or the legal theory in the framework of the above specialized subjects is given the part of general methodological discipline — the one providing the summarizing of their results and setting goals for further investigations and challenging upcoming problems. <...> V.V. Lazarev has radically changed the traditional view on the logics of mutual relations between different levels of the development of the legal knowledge — that is general legal knowledge and legal knowledge of a particular branch. <...> The introduction to legal disciplines such concepts as «challenges and feed-backs» in different aspects of their performance and existence has enabled the author to avoid the trivial reasoning concerning the topic of the subject and methods of the science of law <...>