Article deals with the investigation the legal nature of the state. The author departs from traditional public legal understanding of the state. Having used the theory of Georg Jellinek, who considers the legal structure of the state not only from the perspective of legal science, but also from the perspective of sociology, the justification of private-law nature of the state is given. Thus, the state  is a legal form and legal means of ensuring the interests of the civil society, carried out by its structural self-organization according to the cultural characteristics. It is the bearer of subjective rights and legal responsibilities as a result of individualized will activity in promoting the implementation of own interest in public relations, which allows us to take it to a legal entity. Having universal legal capacity, its civil capacity is revealed through the institution of representation that is realized by the activities of government authority that has a special capacity.