The article establishes that the legal status of the Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine is a combination of his rights, duties, guarantees of activity, responsibility and peculiarities of relations with other structural elements of the security and defense sector determined by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine. The content of the legal status of the Commander is due to the fact that the National Guard of Ukraine, first of all, is a military formation. The constituent elements of the legal status under study are the elements inherent in the heads of military command and control bodies.
 The development of legislation regulating the legal status of the Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine can be divided into four stages: a) the period of laying the foundations for the functioning of military formations and law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, when the search for an optimal model for the distribution of powers between various state institutions was carried out (1991-1994); b) the period of clarifying the competence, structure and subordination of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and destruction of the National Guard of Ukraine (1995-2000); c) the period of opposition and legal conflicts related to the attempts of the highest political forces of the state to increase their influence on the National Guard of Ukraine and its Commander, which ended with the Revolution of Dignity and the disbandment of the internal troops (2001-2013); d) the period of restoration of the National Guard of Ukraine and the addition of the legal status of its commander with guarantees of activity inherent in the rule of law state and preventive mechanisms (2014 – etc.).An analysis of the legislation governing the legal status of the Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine allows us to identify the following pattern: the dominance of individual totalitarian tendencies in government contributes to the conciseness of the legal norms that determine the competence of this official. The development of democratic relations contributes to the specification of the rights and obligations of the Commander of the National Guard of Ukraine, the guarantees of his activities, the specifics of relations with the President of Ukraine, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other officials, as well as the establishment of legislative safeguards for the usurpation of power and the continuity of military command.