NATURAL AND HISTORICAL REGULARITIES OF THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND RULE-OF-LAW STATE

Abstract

In the paper, for the first time in national theoretical legal science, the resolution of the main methodological problems of this science is posed from the standpoint of natural and his-torical laws of the development of human society. At the same time, the prospects of the Marxist-Leninist materialist doctrine of the society development, widespread in Russian social science, are put in doubt. Instead of the Marxist-Leninist materialistic approach to the society development, it is proposed to use a broad social science approach based on natural and historical regularities of the development of society. According to this social science approach, the author fundamentally disagrees with the critical attitude to the institution of social contract that is widespread in national social sciences. According to the author, ig-noring the institution of social contract reduces the relevance of such social science institu-tions, as the people are the bearers of sovereignty and the only source of law, constitutionalism, the rule of law, etc. The author believes that only the return of our country to the bosoms of natural and historical laws will allow us to gain the full use of the aforementioned social science institutes and achieve the foundations of a true civil society and the rule-of-law state corresponding to it. Only when following natural and historical laws of social development, it is possible to reach the positions of those understandings of civil society institutions and the rule-of-law state that have been established and are functioning in the developed countries of the world.