Introduction. In the conditions of the acute phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the «historical» front acquires special signifi cance. This requires constant focus on all parts of the historical and legal process, which will allow to reproduce as clearly as possible the historical and legal reality of a particular period. The importance of analyzing the general principles of Ukrainian and Moscow law of the early modern period is due to the fact that it was at this time that the basic characteristics of law were established, which have largely not lost their relevance to this day. The aim of the article the defi nition and analysis in the context of state and political development of the general foundations of Ukrainian and Moscow law, in particular based on the architectural idea of power in early modern times. Results. At the time of the Lublin Union, the Volyn, Kyiv, and Podil voivodships had «their» right, the core of which was the law of the ancient Russian state. During the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, statutes, land law, German law. As part of the Commonwealth, the decisive infl uence on the legal life of all Ukrainian voivodships is Rusky, Podilsky, Volyn, Kyiv, Podilsky, Chernihiv (since 1634) had a common Commonwealth state and legal matrix, social communicative practices and processes. Thus, among the components of the public-law mechanism of the Commonwealth are the following: election of the king; contractual procedure for registration of relations between the monarch and the political people (nobility) in the form of pacta convent, the principle of nihil novi; equality of rights of all the nobility, regardless of property status; sejm practice, etc. His important factors were also the «Westernization» of Orthodoxy, the common European educational space, the development of cities and urban law. Against this background, the concept of the Russian / Ukrainian people, who settled in their specifi c lands, is being formed. The state and legal legal development in the territories of Vladimir-Suzdal and Moscow principalities is analyzed and it is stated that at the end of the 16th century. in Muscovy, the concept of autocracy was fully established as the only possible one. At the same time, Moscow society suff ered from Moscow’s piety, caused by state terror and extreme conservatism, which contrasted sharply with the intense theological theorizing of the West, stagnation, and isolation. Attention is drawn to the cultural activities of Ukrainian fi gures (Petro Mohyla, Sylvester Kosiv, etc Conclusions. The above shows that at the end of the sixteenth – the fi rst half of the seventeenth century. Ukrainian and Moscow law demonstrates diff erent sets of basic principles, which, at the same time, have a stable and lasting character, which gives grounds to speak of them as legal canons. In Moscow, the foundation of such a right-wing canon of power building includes the following elements: the indistinguishability of power and religion, the elevation of the monarch and his sacralization equally distance his people from him - all his states, which are equal to lawlessness. Enshrined by the Conciliar Code (1649) which was in force until the fi rst half. XIX century., Rigid hierarchical power-legal model of the king (power) – the rest (citizenship), in which the infi nity / infi nity / immensity of monarchical power led to «leveling the value of proportion and measure» on all the swords of Moscow society. The legal canon of building power in the Ukrainian lands in early modern times is determined by the traditional role of the monarch as a mediator between the sacred and the profane, and the social order was built between two centers of power – secular (monarch) and religious (The Pope), and social progress – urban development , universities, in the broadest sense of civil society – was due to competition between it and religious tolerance, which echoed the noble ideology of «golden liberties». And the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth demonstrated a generally atypical type of state-power relations in Europe at that time, which was characterized by the absence of a state monopoly on violence, and thus social practices that in various ways contributed to maintaining peace and tranquility. Key words: Ukrainian law, Moscow law, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,Muscovy, legal canon, state and legal development.