Russian analogue of Anglo-American “liquidated damages”: the prospects for legislative recognition

Introduction: this article deals with the legal assessment of the prospects for legal recognition of the analogue of the Anglo-American “liquidated damages” structure in Russia. The study appears to be currently relevant as in Russia there is a high demand for the effective, efficient, and at the same time balanced mechanisms providing restoration of the property status of the parties to a contract affected by the counterparty’s failure. The absence of direct legislative solutions to the issue of liquidated damages, as well as doctrinal under-development of this institution in the Russian science brings up to date the search for the foreign counterparts for their possible situational use in the law enforcement practice or doctrinally justified rule-making. Purpose: to identify the advantages of the Anglo-American institution “liquidated damages ” and assess its applicability in the Russian legal reality. Methods: the methodological framework of the research is based on general scientific (analysis and synthesis, abstraction and concretization) and special scientific research methods (comparative legal, formal and legal, technical and legal ones). The method of analogy was the starting scientific tool and the object of study at the same time. Results: the positive role of comparative legal and historical analogies in overcoming the lack of legal knowledge and gaps in the current legislation is proved. Specific theoretical and practical problems of the liquidated damages mechanism functioning in the conditions of the regulatory vacuum have been established. Significant obstacles for the direct analogue of the Anglo-American “liquidated damages ” to be enshrined in the Russian civil law are indicated. Conclusions: the findings obtained, on the one hand, created the basis for defining an independent place of liquidated damages as a special kind of losses in the system of sanctions for breach of contractual obligations, and on the other hand, enabled us to formulate recommendations to refrain from hasty legislative recognition of such a measure in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, since its effectiveness within the Russian legal system must first be verified and confirmed by many years of contractual and law enforcement practice.