System of civil law of Ukraine

The system of civil law as a branch must include:

1) civil provisions that are specific rules of behavior. The peculiarity of such rule of behavior is that the vast majority of civil norms has permissive nature, i.e. gives persons a choice of options of behavior. This significantly affects the structure of a civil norm, as such its element as a sanction is either absent or is more universal than in other branches of law;

2) civil institutions, i.e. a group of civil rules governing homogeneous social relations. Thus, property rights institution, institution of delictual liability, etc. should be considered civil institutions;

3) civil sub-branch, which is a set of institutions governing the homogeneous social relations, such as sub-branch of property law, contract law, etc.

The structure of civil law as a branch of law includes:

1) General part that contains civil norms extending the application on the whole range of civil relations and concern the sources of civil law, subjects, objects, contents and grounds of change and termination of civil relations, exercise of civil rights and their protection, etc.;

2) Special part that contains civil norms extending the application only on certain legal relations and concern regulation and protection of personal non-proprietary rights, proprietary and contractual right, intellectual property rights, inheritance rights, etc.

Existence of two main systems of organization (structure) of private law - institutional and pandect – was traditional for private (civil) law.

Institutional system of organization (structure of civil law) includes the following institutions: persons, things, and means of buying things.

Pandect system consists of the following parts: general provisions, property law, contractual law, family law, inheritance law.

Its advantages: singling out of general part, which allows avoiding repetitions when characterizing certain institutions, a clear division into sections (sub-branches), etc. And with it, unlike the institutional system, civil status of a person supposedly passes into the background here, which does not meet modern trends of development of civil law.

However, it should be taken into consideration that neither one nor another system exists in its pure form.

Although some civil codes are built by institutional (the Civil Code of France) or pandect system (the Civil Code of Germany), the structure of civil law as a branch now looks more difficult.

In particular, it covers:

1. General provisions.

2. Legal status of a person.

3. Property rights (Rights to things).

4. Intellectual property rights.

5. Agreements (contractual obligations).

6. Non-contractual obligations.

7. Inheritance law.

8. Family Law. (In Ukraine, it is traditionally treated as a separate branch, but in fact it belongs to the sphere of civil law).

Speaking about the structure of civil law, it should be noted that differentiation of it into general and special parts is arguable.[2]

This differentiation is impractical, because there is no universal “general part” in civil law. However, the “general part” consists as if of two levels: there are provisions common to the whole civil law and there is a general part of the law of obligations. Moreover, the third level - general part of contractual law, general part of non-contractual obligations, general issues of inheritance law, etc. - is possible. Therefore, it is always impossible to separate the “general part” as such.

In this regard, it is advisable to speak not about General and Special part, but about some sections of civil law. And first section of civil law covers its general provisions. The following sections are generally adequate to relevant sub-branches of civil law, moreover, each of them has its own “general” and “special” parts.