We would like to note right away that we are dealing with the work of Doctor of Law, Professor, foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences I.M. Ragimov, Honored Lawyer of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in which he offers to reflect on this important and practically undeveloped problem – the relationship between morality and punishment – not only to lawyers, but also to a wide range of representatives of all social and humanitarian sciences. And even more – to all readers, one way or another interested in the knowledge of law and such an important problem as the nature of punishment. This is especially important for a mass audience, since the book is written in a good Russian literary language, which clearly and clearly sets out difficult legally complex problems. Usually in the social science literature, the relationship between law and morality is analyzed in terms of how and on what grounds they differ from each other. It shows how their interrelationship changed during a particular historical period, among a particular people, and how this was reflected in legislation. I.M. Ragimov offers a unique idea – to consider the problems of morality of punishment itself, the limits of its understanding, possible interpretation and use under a variety of circumstances. This innovative idea, in our opinion, goes back to the same approach in law, which was laid down by Russian lawyers at the beginning of the twentieth century – B.A. Kistyakovsky, N.M. Korkunov, P.I. Novgorodtsev et al, who drew attention to why legal acts are not reflected in the minds and consciousness of people and why many laws remain formal documents and remain the lot of only the legislators themselves. In other words, those who deal with the adoption of laws should know how they reach and are fixed in the public consciousness and behavior. The purpose of this review is to analyze this phenomenon on the basis of such an important scientific and applied concept as “social contract”, which is mentioned in the monograph, but only from certain positions. It is on him, taking into account the philosophical, sociological, socio-psychological approach, that we will focus our attention.