On legal facts and volitional actions in the legal form of transaction

The article substantiates the conclusion that a legal fact is not an action as such, but a legal form of action. Through this form, the norms of public or private law perform their regulatory function, subjectively ordering the actions of individuals and legal entities. Volitional actions significant for civil law are so different in their social essence that they cannot be reduced to one type of legal facts. The role and significance of the category “legal fact” is to compare reality with the norm and to identify the consequences of actions for the social and legal spheres of actors. “Transaction”, being a kind of the category “legal fact”, fulfills this role in the property sphere. A transaction is a means of recognizing the legal significance of actions in order to achieve the consequences predicted by civil law and chosen by the will of the actors. The significance of actions in the legal form of transactions is twofold: they make changes both in the property and in the legal sphere of the actors. This ability is not inherent in other legal facts, for example, a contract.