Civil Liability in Russian Law: Towards Renewing the Discussion

Russian law is still searching for rational ideas about categories, principles, conditions, and optimal models of civil liability. These important issues have been ignored by policy documents for improving civil legislation, the results of reforms of the general part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, and the law of obligations with risk analysis, models, and criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of legal regulation. The results of the reform of Russian law of obligations have led to the emergence in Russian law of analogues of modern legal institutions that have proven themselves in international practice, but the relationship between measures and mechanisms to protect violated rights and civil liability remains unclear. In legal science, the development of problems and institutions of civil liability is rare. The existing developments of the doctrine of the Soviet period have not yet been adapted to the changed socio‑economic reality, and a new concept of tort law has not yet been developed. As a result, it is difficult to determine the system of measures of civil liability and the conditions of their application, the doctrine of a civil offense remains undeveloped, vague characteristics of standards of responsibility have entered into use, foreign approaches and solutions are used uncritically and practically without adaptation and clarification of the actual need. The emerging trend of strengthening only the exacting focus of civil liability, without correlation with other tasks and general goal‑setting, is alarming. The principles of legal certainty form the need to review scientific and practical developments in the field of civil liability with the prospect of updating Russian legislation.