Main trends in modern reformation of civil legislation of the Russian Federation: general characteristics, ontological and gnoseological bases, specific types

Introduction: Russian civil legislation is being intensively reformed these days, which results in the emergence of several development trends that require deep scientific consideration and conceptualization. This is of considerable importance not only in terms of theory but also for law-making and application practices. Civil legislation development trends have never been addressed in this context as part of legal research so far. Purpose: to provide a comprehensive study of the main trends in modern reformation of Russia’s civil legislation and, based on that, to identify positive aspects, drawbacks and gaps in this field, and make relevant recommendations and suggestions. Methods: general scientific methods, including analysis, synthesis, dialectical, historical, formal logical, inductive and deductive methods, together with scientific methods specific to legal science, including formal dogmatic, comparative and historical legal methods, are used to identify the main trends in reformation of civil legislation, trace back their origin, determine their interrelations, development mechanisms and the influence on understanding the processes taking place in civil legislation. Results: trends in the reformation of civil legislation are defined as focal areas of its development representing the mechanisms of its evolution; two major groups of trends have been identified: those of systemic and institutional nature - their general description and descriptions of each in particular are provided; the fundamental bases of civil legislation have been studied, including their interrelationship with related categories such as principles of civil law, analogy of law and civil law ideas; their role and importance as fundamental key phenomena in the civil law system are demonstrated; various innovations in civil legislation have been legally evaluated; mechanisms determining the processes of modern reformation of civil legislation have been studied. Conclusions: trends in the reformation of civil legislation must be distinguished from the attempts of introducing random inconsistent modifications, supplements and adjustments, which dramatically reduces the qualitative characteristics of legislation, its regulatory potential and the effectiveness of application. Institutional trends must be premised on systemic trends in the reformation of civil legislation, make the latter more specific and develop them in respect to individual directions of the legislation development. The effectiveness of reforms in civil legislation is closely related to the in-depth analysis of their ontological, gnoseological and methodological bases together with the development of adequate law-application practices.