The article discusses the evolution of civil and political rights in the French Republic in historical retrospective and the key events, that influenced their formation in a modern way. The problems of freedom and equality in France in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The article studied the views of representatives of pre-revolutionary science of law on the understanding of freedom and equality in France. The authors pay special attention to the French Revolution of 1789, the fall of absolutism, the process of establishing the constitutional order and new democratic principles of the organization of state power. © 2020, Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, Institut Istorii (Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of General Hist. All rights reserved.