As a legal instrument, legal presumption occupies a special place in law generally and in the system of legal instruments particularly. We can say with confidence that its regulatory potential is not limited only by legislative consolidation. In other words, that it goes beyond the dogma of law and, from the point of view of the phenomenology of law, acts as a legal instrument to ensure the implementation of basic ideas in legal reality and legal mentality.

Within the framework of the research the philosophical and legal directions formed in the legal doctrine around the legal presumptions have been presented, the methodological shortcomings have been revealed, a range of problems has been identified that could not find their comprehensive solutions based on the indicated methodological approaches, as well as their reasons. In the end, a sequence of methodological steps was presented, which makes it possible to overcome the existing problems in the legal doctrine.

In the legal doctrine, the author has presented the court of jurists a thesis, according to which the development of the concepts of the gսeneral theory of integration of the branch approaches to legal presumptions is possible within the framework of the instrumental theory of law. In particular, the essence of the instrumental theory was presented at the philosophical level, was discussed the potential of the instrumental theory in concept development, and conclusions were provided, which will be a starting point for the development of the concept of the general theory of legal presumptions.

In the research, the essence of presumption as a philosophical-epistemological tool has been examined. In particular, at the ontological level the author has discussed the question: how the presumption is formed and what does it represent and what is its role at the epistemological level. As a conclusion, the concept of presumption as a philosophical-epistemological tool was given, on the basis of which the essence of the legal presumption should be investigated and a general concept should be elaborated.

In the framework of the research, the author has presented the existing methodological approaches to the construction of the concept of legal presumption and its shortcomings. Then he put forward his vision of theoretical-methodological ways of constructing the concept of presumption, which would make it possible to develop a general concept and thus achieve integration of branch approaches.

In the context of theoretical-methodological ways of constructing the concept of legal presumption, the essence of the legal presumption was discussed, the answer was given to the question of what is the presumption from a legal point of view, what does it allow to do in the framework of legal regulation.

From the point of view of formal logic, the categories of "content" and "form" have been considered, their correlation, the elements of the concept of "legal presumption" were presented as necessary elements for the construction of the form of mentality, the issue of the inverse relation of the volume and content of the concept was discussed, the principle was developed, based on which a general concept of the legal presumption should be built.

Within the framework of the methodology underlying the elaboration of the concept of instrumental theory of law as a general theory of legal presumptions, the general description of the legal principle as a starting legal remedy was discussed, its relation with the legal presumption as an auxiliary legal remedy was presented anew. As a result, criteria have been put forward that will enable the integration of different branch approaches to the legal phenomena mentioned in the legal doctrine.

In the research, reference was made to the existing approaches to the issue of the ratio between legal presumption and legal norm, their advantages and shortcomings. After that, within the framework of the instrumental theory of law, the author tried to solve the problem: the general description of the rule of law as a legal remedy, the differences between the rule of law and the legal presumption has been presented, the ratio between the rule of law and the legal presumption as an auxiliary legal remedy have been discussed.

In the framework of the research, the author considered the value, functions and types of the legal presumption. Thus, the value of the legal presumption, its place at the level of legal values, as well as the manifestations in the legislation have been presented. The existing approaches to legal functions in the legal doctrine have been discussed, their shortcomings were identified, the criteria according to which the functions of legal presumptions should be studied, the general concept of the function of legal presumption was developed within the framework of instrumental theory of law. Afterwards, from the point of view of legal regulation the functions performed by the legal presumptions have been classified into separate groups, within the framework of which both their essence and their manifestations in the legal reality have been discussed.

And finally, in the context of the instrumental theory of law, the author addressed to the classification of legal presumptions, suggesting the following methodological path: 1) to identify unresolved issues related to classification, and in some cases even incorrect formulations of the problem, 2) to get a theoretical and practical understanding of the essence of legal presumption from the point of view of classification, 3) as a result of considering the issue of classification, to determine the general concept of legal presumption integrating sectoral branch approaches.