On the Legal Criteria of the Subject and the System of Civil Law

The rapid development of socio‑economic relations, the testing of new means and methods of regulating property, non‑property, and organizational relations actualizes the issue of the system of civil law and legislation, the functional connectivity of its legal institutions and sub‑sectors. Issues of legal qualification of relations related to the implementation of state competence by public authorities and their officials require special attention, and their attribution to the subject and method of civil law is erroneous. The substantive and meaningful integrity of civil law relations gives an impetus to their independent development without any need or expediency to include administrative, legal and other public relations in a civil legal form. The article highlights the property isolation (property law and its domestic analogues) of subjects of commodity and monetary relations as a legal criterion for distinguishing the subject of private (civil) law, covering both property and organizational contractual and corporate relations, as well as the system of objects of civil rights as the basis for dividing civil law into separate subsectors (property, obligation, corporate law, intellectual and personal non‑property rights). The primacy of the legal rather than the economic feature of property relations is noted, in connection with which the relevance of the scientific and methodological heritage of S. N. Bratus is substantiated in terms of determining the criteria for building a system of civil law, legal entities and property rights, while describing the essence of family and corporate legal relations through the concept of V. M. Khvostov “on the right to one’s own and another’s personality”. The general conclusion is drawn that the subject of civil law can be determined only by a subjective criterion, and its system is built depending on the objects of civil rights, forming various interrelated civil law regimes of property, obligations, corporate, intellectual and other personal non‑property rights. The system of civil law develops as the socio‑economic relations themselves become more complex as an object of legal regulation. The article is based on the author’s report at the XVIII Scientific Readings in memory of Professor S. N. Bratus, “Private and Public Law in Law of the 21st Century: in search of Balance”, held at the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation on October 22, 2025.