The article provides the insight into the doctrine of natural law evolution from the origin of its ideas in the times of antiquity through the formation of fundamental stipulations thereof up to the acknowledgement of its position within the modern legal theory and practice.

The article dwells upon the point that the doctrine of natural law has undergone both the periods of blistering ascent, as well as shocking degradation turning at some times into full decay.

 The period of Renaissance (XVII–XVIII centuries) has experienced one of the natural law highest ascents. This is when the powerful school of natural law leading it to prominent position in legal perception was initiated. It has had significant influence on the process of national and international law development, while the latter owes much to this school contributing a lot to its present day state.

 The article further focuses on the causes of natural law school degradation being primarily caused by the concept of legal positivism dwelling on absolutization of the role of scholarship as well as rational and logical mentality in lawmaking, and also on the ignorance of mental and value-based foundations of the society and trying to taper it to the secluded system of norms, as well as to negation of judicial practice’ role in lawmaking process etc.

The named and other disadvantages of legal positivism had no other choice but to support the renaissance of the natural law, having place after World War II in the form of the reaction on outrageous tyranny of Nazi regime which was often advocated in the form of law.

The article analyzes the input Gustav Radbruch, Arthur Kaufmann and certain other philosophers have made to this process.

The article concludes by basing its findings on the works of Robert Alexy, Lon Fuller, Ronald Dworkin and others providing assistance to track tendencies of natural law doctrine development in contemporary non-positivist legal philosophy.

This analysis has provided the author grounds for the following conclusions:

Firstly, the most widely popular and most influential contemporary concepts of legal philosophy (natural law doctrine, theory of legal positivism, sociological theory jointly with their numerous varieties cannot be assessed based on science criteria, namely “truefalse”, “truth-lies”. Unlike scientific concepts, these should be assessed based on the criteria of the complementarity of both theories’ benefits.

Secondly, regardless of the fact that natural law doctrine together with other law perception concepts does include certain disadvantages its achievements leave those disadvantages far behind. The achievements of natural law theory may be regarded as following: the focus of the doctrine on finding the objective essence of law through addressing its moral and ethical framework, thus significantly widening and deepening the essence of law by linking it to the values of world culture which have been stacking for many centuries; human-centrism of natural law doctrine: human and its dignity, integral rights and liberties, being inherent feature of human nature locate in the center of the concept. Those features form a link for the state, thus limiting it and being a significant barrier for state tyranny; natural law doctrine opposition to excessive formalism and dogmatism in law. It stipulates that the primary source of law is not attributed to the state but to human, and its inherent natural rights and freedoms together with other human culture values; differentiation of “law” and “statute” terms, adoption of guidelines for lawful statute and law-breaking statutes criteria.

Thirdly, those and other achievements of natural law doctrine form currently the basis of general legal theory achievements, including those achievements in human rights theory, the concept of the rule of law and law-governed state, as well as of the legal practice.