The article considers the concept of legal consciousness as a category of sociological analysis. Attention is focused on the understanding of legal consciousness, reflected in the works of domestic and foreign social researchers. The relevance of their works as a methodologically significant basis for sociological analysis of legal consciousness of the modern generation of Russian youth is emphasized. The processes of transformation of the Russian society predetermined the crisis of legal consciousness, the consequence of which was a significant manifestation of cases of an exceptionally negative state of legal consciousness in the youth environment. For the purposes of study, it is determined that the features of youth legal consciousness, updated by the classics of sociology, are largely due not only to the imperfection of legal acts in terms of the scope of its rights and obligations, but also to the crisis of social institutions of socialization of the younger generation, the specifics of its individual and group characteristics of consciousness and behavior.
