JURIDICAL CONSTRUCTION AND THE NORMATIVE DIMENSION OF THE INSTITUTIONAL SYMBOLIC SYSTEM: A STRUCTURAL-COGNITIVE ACCOUNT OF JURIDICAL COORDINATION

Oleg Khalabudenko

doi:10.69635/mssl.2026.2.4.64

Authors

Oleg Khalabudenko PhD in Law, Associate Professor, Department of Political Sciences and Law, Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Kyiv, Ukraine Author https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9478-0164

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.69635/mssl.2026.2.4.64

Keywords:

Juridical Construction; Institutional Symbolic System; Legal Positions; Structural-Cognitive Theory; Cognitive Integration; Institutional Coordination; Practical Legal Orientation; Obligatio Propter Rem

Abstract

The article reconstructs juridical construction as the specifically juridical structural form through which the normative content of an institutional symbolic system is organised and symbolically stabilised as a reproducible configuration of differentiated positions and their normative dependencies. Two questions are separated throughout. The structural question concerns how juridically differentiated normative content is institutionally organised; the functional question concerns what such organisation may make possible for differentiated practical legal orientation. The structural reconstruction proceeds from cognitive limitation and institutional symbolic mediation to normative and juridical differentiation, and defines juridical construction through a configurational criterion rather than through the novelty of its constituent elements. The functional analysis distinguishes contextual recoverability, operability, contextual accessibility of relational normative significance, normative relatability, practically sufficient compatibility, and cognitive integration as analytically different relations, each of which can fail independently. The argument is disciplined by two devices. Obligatio propter rem supplies a doctrinal hard case in which object-related and obligatory positions, transformation rules, temporal conditions, operations, and consequences are concentrated, with Italian law as the baseline and Argentine, Brazilian, and Colombian materials as comparative controls of structural generality. A fragmentation test then varies specified properties of configurational organisation while holding materially comparable substantive determinations, information availability, and verification conditions sufficiently stable, using the number and type of intermediate normative determinations required to answer fixed position-relative questions as an independently specified indicator. The contribution is architectural and metatheoretical: it locates juridical construction within a structural-cognitive theory of institutional coordination, separates the structural claim from independently contestable hypotheses concerning practical legal orientation, and distinguishes both from independent normative evaluation.

References

Bechky, B. A. (2006). Gaffers, gofers, and grips: Role-based coordination in temporary organizations. Organization Science, 17(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0149

Bueres, A. J. (2012). Obligaciones “propter rem” y sus relaciones con otras figuras. Lecciones y Ensayos, 90, 99–127.

Casanovas, P., Hashmi, M., de Koker, L., & Lam, H.-P. (2024). A three steps methodological approach to legal governance validation. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.20691

Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. E. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 127–149). American Psychological Association.

Galison, P. (1997). Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics. University of Chicago Press.

Gallagher, S. (2023). Embodied and enactive approaches to cognition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009209793

Hadfield, G. K., & Weingast, B. R. (2012). What is law? A coordination model of the characteristics of legal order. Journal of Legal Analysis, 4(2), 471–514.

Hansmann, H., & Kraakman, R. (2002). Property, contract, and verification: The numerus clausus problem and the divisibility of rights. Journal of Legal Studies, 31(S2), S373–S420. https://doi.org/10.1086/466560

Hohfeld, W. N. (1913). Some fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning. Yale Law Journal, 23(1), 16–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/785533

Hohfeld, W. N. (1917). Fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning. Yale Law Journal, 26(8), 710–770.

Hutchins, E. (2005). Material anchors for conceptual blends. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(10), 1555–1577. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.06.008

Jakubiec, M. (2022). Legal concepts as mental representations. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 35, 1837–1855. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09853-7

Jhering, R. von. (1858). Geist des römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung: Zweiter Theil, Zweite Abtheilung. Breitkopf und Härtel.

Khalabudenko, O. A. (2010). K voprosu stanovleniia poniatiia “iuridicheskaia konstruktsiia”: Metodologicheskii aspekt [On the formation of the concept of “juridical construction”: A methodological aspect]. Zakon i zhizn, (10), 15–23.

Khalabudenko, O. A. (2013). Nekotorye voprosy metodologii prava: Grazhdansko-pravovye prerogativy i iuridicheskie konstruktsii [Some issues in the methodology of law: Civil-law prerogatives and juridical constructions]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Iuridicheskie nauki, 1(19), 174–186.

Khalabudenko, O. A. (2015). Iurydychni konstruktsii u fokusi intertemporalnoho ta interlokalnoho metodiv porivniannia: Metodolohichnyi aspekt [Juridical constructions in the focus of intertemporal and interlocal methods of comparison: A methodological aspect]. In O. V. Kresin (Ed.), Filosofiia porivnialnoho pravoznavstva (pp. 347–365). Liha-Pres.

Khalabudenko, O. A. (2020). Normy prava v fokuse teorii konstruktivizma [Legal norms in the focus of constructivist theory]. Theoretical and Applied Law, 2(4), 31–43. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3837259

Khalabudenko, O. A. (2025). Defining the boundaries of law: Deconstruction and constructivist methodologies in the analysis of legal norms. In Humanitarni priorytety v umovakh sotsialno-politychnykh transformatsii Ukrainy [Humanitarian priorities in the context of socio-political transformations of Ukraine] (pp. 124–136). SH NTM "Novyi kurs". https://doi.org/10.61718/mon202511.03

Khalabudenko, O. A. (2026). A structural-cognitive theory of institutional coordination: Symbolic mediation, cognitive integration and coordinative sustainability. Metaverse Science, Society and Law, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.69635/mssl.2026.2.3.60

Kirsh, D. (2010). Thinking with external representations. AI & Society, 25(4), 441–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-010-0272-8

Lewis, D. (1969). Convention: A philosophical study. Harvard University Press.

Lindahl, L. (1977). Position and change: A study in law and logic. D. Reidel.

Lindahl, L. (2004). Deduction and justification in the law: The role of legal terms and concepts. Ratio Juris, 17(2), 182–202.

Lindahl, L., & Odelstad, J. (2011). Stratification of normative systems with intermediaries. Journal of Applied Logic, 9(2), 113–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jal.2010.01.002

MacCormick, N. (1998). Norms, institutions, and institutional facts. Law and Philosophy, 17(3), 301–345.

MacCormick, N. (2007). Institutions of law: An essay in legal theory. Oxford University Press.

MacCormick, N., & Weinberger, O. (1986). An institutional theory of law: New approaches to legal positivism. D. Reidel.

Malone, T. W., & Crowston, K. (1994). The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Computing Surveys, 26(1), 87–119. https://doi.org/10.1145/174666.174668

Manna, L. (2007). Le obbligazioni propter rem. CEDAM.

McAdams, R. H. (2015). The expressive powers of law: Theories and limits. Harvard University Press.

McGinn, T. A. J. (2015). The expressive function of law and the lex imperfecta. Roman Legal Tradition, 11, 1–41.

Menary, R. (2010). Cognitive integration and the extended mind. In R. Menary (Ed.), The extended mind (pp. 267–288). MIT Press.

Menary, R. (2018). Cognitive integration: How culture transforms us and extends our cognitive capabilities. In A. Newen, L. De Bruin, & S. Gallagher (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of 4E cognition (pp. 187–216). Oxford University Press.

Merrill, T. W., & Smith, H. E. (2000). Optimal standardization in the law of property: The numerus clausus principle. Yale Law Journal, 110(1), 1–70.

North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.

Petracca, E., & Gallagher, S. (2020). Economic cognitive institutions. Journal of Institutional Economics, 16(6), 747–765. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137420000144

Petracca, E., & Gallagher, S. (2025). Trust and reliance in the cognitive institutions of cryptocurrency. Mind & Society, 24, 125–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-024-00302-z

Pilloni, S. (2018). Actio aquae pluviae arcendae ed obbligo di patientiam praestare in presenza di un agger naturalis: Su Paul. 49 ad ed., D. 39, 3, 2, 5–6. Bullettino dell’Istituto di Diritto Romano “Vittorio Scialoja”, 112, 147–173.

Ruiter, D. W. P. (1997). A basic classification of legal institutions. Ratio Juris, 10(4), 357–371.

Ruiter, D. W. P. (2001). Legal institutions. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. Free Press.

Sichelman, T. (2021). Quantifying legal entropy. Frontiers in Physics, 9, Article 665054. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2021.665054

Sichelman, T., & Smith, H. E. (2024). A network model of legal relations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 382, Article 20230153. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2023.0153

Simon, H. A. (1957). Models of man: Social and rational. Wiley.

Smith, H. E. (2012a). On the economy of concepts in property. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 160(7), 2097–2128.

Smith, H. E. (2012b). Property as the law of things. Harvard Law Review, 125, 1691–1726.

Star, S. L., & Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001

Zhang, J., & Norman, D. A. (1994). Representations in distributed cognitive tasks. Cognitive Science, 18(1), 87–122.

Corte Constitucional de Colombia, Sentencia C-321/22.

Corte di cassazione, Sez. II, ord. 20 June 2022, no. 19756.

Corte di cassazione, Sez. II, sent. 16 December 2024, no. 32707.

Corte di cassazione, Sez. II, ord. 14 March 2025, no. 6819.

Corte di cassazione, Sez. II, sent. 2018, no. 26987.

Superior Tribunal de Justiça, REsp 1.345.331/RS (Tema Repetitivo 886).

Superior Tribunal de Justiça, REsp 1.442.840/PR, DJe 21 August 2015.

Superior Tribunal de Justiça, REsp 2.015.740/SP and REsp 2.100.395/SP (Tema Repetitivo 1349).