Introduction. In modern legal science, there is no universal and uniform approach to defining the concept of “public control”, which predetermines and actualizes the need for a detailed study of the legal nature of this phenomenon, its content and the functions that it performs in the state and society. Theoretical analysis. The analysis of doctrinal approaches to disclosing the content of public control, formed in the system of legal science, allows us to draw a conclusion about a differentiated definition of this phenomenon.