The circulation of property objects of civil law rights: basic concepts, types, trends of legislative development

The research raises the problem of the need to analyze the transformation of the civil law regulation of the circulation of civil law objects of a property nature in the context of global changes in all spheres of public life, in particular, in the context of the sanctions policy and the large-scale introduction of digital technologies. A striking example of this is the changes made by Federal law no. 34-FZ, signed by the President of the Russian Federation on March 18, 2019, and the amendments to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, including the establishment of a legal definition of the concept of “digital rights”. The correlation of such categories as “civil circulation” and “property circulation” is analyzed. It is pointed out that the definition of the concept “object of civil rights” enshrined in the legislation cannot be considered successful. The categories “object of civil law relations” and “object of civil rights” are compared. It is emphasized that the object of civil rights is either equal to the object of civil law relations, or directly related to it, which does not prevent the recognition of their identity. Attention is drawn to the controversial understanding of civil rights; their characteristics are identified (resolution, the regulatory guaranteed possibility of their legal securing to the subjects of civil law, and law objectness). After shedding light on the essence of the main categories, the author examines the classifications of civil rights objects fixed in the legislation and expressed in the literature. The special author’s attention is directed to such a feature of property objects of civil rights as circulation. It is concluded that when considering the classification of civil rights objects, it is necessary to be guided primarily bythe legally significant features of certain objects, what is important for the establishment of the legal regime of these objects and affects the establishment of the specifics of civil circulation of a particular object of civil rights. The key grounds for classification of civil rights objects are considered. Depending on the specifics of the legal regime of civil rights objects, according to the legislative approach, there are four groups of civil rights objects. The paper reveals the place of digital rights in the system of civil rights objects under the legislation of the Russian Federation and the impact of their legal recognition on property circulation. The deciding method of research was a systematic analysis of the main concepts and categories of modern property circulation “objects of civil rights”, “civil circulation”, “circulability”, “digital rights”. The general scientific dialectical method of cognition, the specific scientific methods (formal legal, the method of interpretation of legal norms, and the method of legal modeling) and the empirical methods (comparison, description, interpretation) were also used. In conclusion, the author comes to the point that the innovations in the civil legislation related to the latest socio-economic transformations due to the fourth industrial revolution are not always justified. In this regard, the task of studying the civil law regulation of digital rights as a new object of civil law becomes particularly relevant, including the consideration of the questions about whether this innovation is appropriate and how well the legislator, in order to regulate the sphere of digital rights, formulated and fixed their concept in the law. First of all, it is noteworthy that the legislator put digital rights on a par with the traditional objects of civil rights, namely property rights, including non-cash funds and non-documentary securities (paragraph 1 of article 128 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). The purpose of the study of these issues is to identify the place of digital rights in the system of objects of civil rights under the legislation of the Russian Federation, as well as to increase the theoretical knowledge in the field of civil law in general, the legal support for property circulation and the implementation of property rights in the information system in particular.