The theoretical foundation of social and legal policy

The paper referred to the early XX century being for Russia the period of emerging preconditions that enabled perceiving in concepts the policies towards society and law and empirically implementing this relatively new direction in the State’ functioning. The author made a review of stands produced on this issue by both foreign and Russian researchers as Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leon Duguit, Boris N. Chicherin, Pavel I. Novrorodtseff, I.A. Pokrovsky; S.A. Kotlyarevsky, and made an inference on the matter. Namely, the concept of individual rights in society when combined with the Public Social Welfare, on the one part, show disagreement with the classical liberal thought assuming freedoms in market relations, on the other; lack of the legally defined construct on the right for decent life, and, subsequently, lack of the exact criteria for clarifying the reasons and the extent/ scope of public care for the indigent people; intrusion of the moral set of values and norms into the domain of legal regulations; urgency to re-distribute the public wealth being caused by the high cost of public care for the poor, that the public funds may compensate only at the expense of the economically successful part of the community.