The Basis for Building a System of Principles of Civil Law: Concepts of Social Purpose of Law and Economic Analysis of Law

Introduction: the basis for building a system of principles of civil law is insufficiently studied in modern science. Its resolution plays not only a purely doctrinal role, but also has practical significance: resolving conflicts between individual principles of private law, interpreting norms, resolving special cases when applying the analogy of law with reference to the meaning of civil legislation. It is by referring to the basis for building a system of principles that the logic of the supreme courts should be interpreted, using the basic principles in forming their legal positions. At a first approximation, economic efficiency and social purpose, which do not fully correlate with each other during external preliminary study, can claim to be the foundations for building (that is, the basic conceptual positions) of the system of principles of civil law. The purpose of the study is to establish the basis for building a system of principles of civil law and to determine the possibility of practical use of the findings in connection with the existence of concepts of social purpose of law and economic analysis of law.

Methodology: various general scientific (analysis, synthesis, analogy) and special legal methods of cognition (comparative legal, dogmatic, methods of analysis of legislation and judicial practice) are used as research methods. A special role was played by the methods of legal modeling and system analysis of the principles of civil law.

Results: economic efficiency and social purpose do not contradict each other, as they perform different tasks, being of different orders. Other approaches to the foundations of building a system of principles of civil law do not deserve support.

Conclusions: the basis for building a system of principles of civil law is the social purpose of law, which allows resolving conflicts between principles for specific cases. However, social purpose is not a principle in itself. The concept of economic analysis of law should not be considered as the basis for building a system of principles of civil law, but is a methodological technique for interpreting legal norms, as well as an approach to the study of legal structures, including individual principles of civil law.

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