Social state in the constitutional law: on the discussion of the notion

Introduction: the article is devoted to the description of the contents of the scientific discussion of the volume of meanings of the sociality of the state as one of the fundamentals of the constitutional system of the modern democratic law-bound state and as a constitutional legal principle with the account for the foreign scientists’ approaches. Purpose: to research different approaches to the definition of the social state notion. Methods: the methodological basis of the research is the complex of scientific cognition methods, the main of the latter being the historicism, the systematicity methods, the analysis and comparative legal method. Results: the absence of the universal and precise definition of the social state notion was discovered, as well as the reasons for this absence. Conclusions: the principal disputable issues of the social state notion were defined, as well as the aspects and the principles of the social state determined by the complexity and uncertainty of the state sociality in the framework of the constitutional legal characteristics and fundamentals of the constitutional system, and the variety of the social state models existing in the world legal order.