The article analyses human rights as a historical institution and a philosophical and legal concept, which can be found in the reflections of natural law (ius naturale) school representatives. The development of the human rights idea associated with the notion of human dignity, and its realisation as a set of legal rights are tracked. The authors consistently prove that the doctrine of natural human rights is institutionalised in political and legal documents as an attempt to find a correlation between the values of freedom and social justice.