Subjective good faith in the structure of the general concept of good faith

good faith, which exists in legislation in the form of the lexical formula ‘did not know and should not have known' and other variants hereto, which predetermined the research subject of this article. Purpose: to formulate new theoretical approaches to the stated problem based on the consolidation of the available views on the issue, which would help both to develop a uniform judicial practice and provide civil theory with the new areas in researching good faith and adjacent categories. The methodological framework of the research rests on the general scientific method of scientific cognition, which reflects the connection between the doctrine and the law enforcement practice, as well as on the methods of dialectics, analysis, synthesis, analogy, functional and system approaches. Results: the legislatively established concept of good faith varies in civil law due to positioning it both as a general requirement to conduct of the participants of civil turnover, having a universal nature, and as a special regulation concerning conduct in specific relations. In this connection, it is necessary to distinguish between several ‘profiles' of good faith: 1. objective good faith, the nature of which forms positive obligation, 2. subjective good faith, identified when there is a violation of the right and therefore a need for its protection through the legislative formula ‘did not know and should not have known'. At the same time, not all the special cases of applying this formula in a statutory text should be viewed as subjective good faith. Having performed formal and logical analysis of this concept, the author concludes that in certain civil law regulations this formula has a constitutive meaning specific for the given regulation and cannot be used as a subjective good faith criterion. In the legislation, there are also cases of applying this formula which are not related to the good faith category. The juridical technique of using this formula in statutory texts in various versions of its lexical expression requires an independent theoretical analysis and consequent improvement as the logic of its application is not always consecutive. Investigating the legal methods of including the categories covering subjective good faith into statutory texts in the supranational European law (contract law and property law), the author makes a conclusion about the necessity of a more structured and limited use of the formula ‘did not know and should not have known'.