On the Validity of the Separation of the Cathegory "Origins of Law" in the Theory of Law and State

The object of research attention in the article was the phenomenon of the origins of law. The main approaches in Russian historiography to the definition of the sources of law and their relationship with the sources of law are considered as the subject of the study. The purpose of the work is to attempt to substantiate the need to separate the sources of law from the semantically overloaded category of sources of law into an independent category. The author pays special attention to the polarity of opinions in the existing discussion regarding the origins of law, which is due to both the lack of elaboration of the problem, the polysemy of the term "source", and the differences in approaches to legal understanding. The author focuses on the fact that in various classifications there is a special division of the sources of law into "primary", which once in ancient times laid the foundation for the institution of law, and "secondary", functionally feeding the law up to the present. On this basis, regardless of the approach to understanding law, it seems logical to separate the "primary" sources of law into a separate theoretical category of "sources of law" with the prospect of its consolidation in the theory of state and law. The practical significance of the allocation and the need for a special study of the origins of law are justified by the fact that the search and identification of the chronologically oldest sources of law in the system of regulatory regulation of a potestar-early class society can be the key to an attempt to develop a universal, integrative definition of law.