THE IMPACT OF WAR NARRATIVES AND TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF LEGAL CULTURE

Abstract

The article offers a theoretical and legal interpretation of the influence of war narratives and traumatic
experience on the transformation of legal culture, with a particular focus on the contemporary Ukrainian
experience and with selected historical analogies from world practice. The relevance of the topic is determined by
the fact that the full-scale war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has changed not only the security and
political environment, but also the very foundations of legal understanding, institutional trust, perceptions of
justice, responsibility, dignity, memory, and statehood. The purpose of the article is to provide a theoretical and
legal substantiation of the mechanisms through which war narratives and traumatic experience influence legal
culture and to identify the main directions of its transformation in contemporary Ukraine. It is argued that war
transforms legal culture not directly as an event, but through the ways in which it is socially interpreted, namely
through war narratives that give normative meaning to loss, resistance, sacrifice, heroism, collaboration,
responsibility, and justice. The study demonstrates that in the Ukrainian case such transformation is manifested
in the change of the value core of legal culture, the strengthening of dignity, sovereignty, historical truth, national
identity, and international legal responsibility. It is established that the traumatic experience of war increasingly
acquires a legal form through the documentation of war crimes, the recording of damage, the legal protection of
military personnel, veterans, prisoners of war, and missing persons, as well as through the reinterpretation of
memory as an object of legal protection. The article shows that contemporary Ukrainian legal culture combines
mobilisation with critical reflection, the strengthening of the security impulse with the simultaneous preservation
of demands for accountability and the rule of law. Based on analogies with the experiences of Germany, Rwanda,
South Africa, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is concluded that after mass violence law performs not only a
punitive function but also memorial, educational, rehabilitative, and integrative ones.

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