Оn the method of the civil law

The paper's authors focus their attention on the problem with identifying fundamental features pertaining to the method of civil law. Finding a solution to the said problem is becoming increasingly important because the reform of the Russian civil law currently underway will be able to achieve its goals of higher efficiency only if the legislators practice a comprehensive approach to consider every aspect of progress in civil law research. This paper demonstrates counter-productive nature of the idea that the method of civil law can be defined through a single legal characteristic as well as by means of establishing specifics of legal status of the parties involved, and specifics of grounds underlying emergency and contents of civil-law relations. The authors are attempting comprehensive examination to evaluate specifics of civil-law influences on public relations based on the most substantial features that characterize the method in terms of contents, form, degree of certainty and functional vector of the established rules of conduct. The sum total of identified key characteristics – preferential license, prevalent discretion, maximum certainty, and harmonizing destination – not only enables the authors to distinctly draw the line between civil law and its adjacent particular domains, it also makes it possible to formulate a caveat against adopting standards that might compromise the described methodological balance. Among other things, the paper offers arguments to support statements of disapproval as regards amendment of Article 1 of the Russian Federation Civil Code to establish as a fundamental principle of civil right to demand that parties to civil law relations should act in good faith, when civil rights are granted, executed and protected, and when obligations are performed; this argument rests on the fact that it seriously expands the limits of situation-based enforcement of law and undermines certainty that is a substantial feature of the civil law method. At the same time, the treatise welcomes positively the recent changes to the provisions to the RF Civil Code as ones that well correspond with the true legal substance of civil-law influences, since the said changes work to strengthen discretion in business regulation in farming and agriculture, increase the harmonizing effect as individual citizens and corporate entities exercise their right to claim compensation of damage caused by unlawful actions of the both federal and local governments and municipal agencies.