Abstract. The term "law" is used very often today and it is interpreted extremely broadly. Humanity has discovered and constituted an incredibly large number of different "laws", the laws of physics, laws of nature, social laws. But how justified is such a widespread use of the term "law" and how correctly is it used? This article is devoted to the analysis of this circumstance, according to the results of which the author gives a correct, from his point of view, definition of the concept "law" and formulates the law of the highest level of generalization, which he calls the main one.