"Welfare state" and "sociality of the state": scientific interpretations of the concepts and their features

Introduction: the article is devoted to the scientific discussion about the scope and content of the "welfare state " and "sociality of the state " concepts as parts of the state legitimacy constitutional principle. Purpose: to study different doctrinal approaches in Russian legal science to defining the concepts "welfare state " and "sociality of the state ". Methods: the methodological framework of the research is based on the general dialectical method of cognition and a set of general scientific methods: systemacity, analysis and synthesis, concretization; the comparative law research method is used as the main specific scientific method. Results: the paper reveals lack of scientific interpretation of the "welfare state " and "sociality of the state " concepts. It identifies different approaches to these concepts in terms of different branches of jurisprudence. The author reviews and describes different interpretations of the concepts in chronological order how they appeared in thesis research works. Conclusions: as the analysis has shown, the concept "sociality of the state " is seldom used in scientific works, let alone its interpretations. Moreover, this concept lacks any official interpretation in the Constitution of the Russian Federation.