Nikolaienko N. State and Legal Views of M. M. Kovalevskyi (general-theoretical aspects)

The thesis presents the first in the national law science systemic analysis of the legal heritage of one of the outstanding thinkers of the end of the 19-th century – beginning of the 20-th century M. M. Kovalevskyi. The candidate for a degree had expounded the general-theoretical issues of state and law, which were raised and originally solved by the scholar: origin, essence, and functions of state; forms of state governance and forms of state system; understanding of law; origin, nature and essence of law; guaranteeing and ensuring of human rights and freedoms by state. The thesis clears up the relations between the specificities of the then philosophical and legal science and the processes of formation of the state and legal views of M. M. Kovalevskyi, proposes the periodization of their genesis. The author argues that the scholar is considered one the founders of the sociological approach in the national science of law, and that the methodology of study of state and law, which was elaborated by M. M. Kovalevskyi, tended to approximate to the integral jurisprudence that was distinguished as the independent theoretical and methodological trend in the science of law of the 20-th century.