Development of “guilt” notion

Abstract

Objective: to study the concept and essence of the institute of guilt in private law, its formation and development, as well as the allocation of stages in the formation of the doctrine of guilt as a precondition of civil liability.Methods: dialectic approach to cognition of social phenomena, enabling to analyze them in historical development and functioning in the context of the totality of objective and subjective factors that determined the choice of the following research methods: historical-legal, comparative-legal, systemic, systemic-structural, and formal-legal. Results: the article shows different approaches to the definition of guilt as a condition of civil liability; three periods of the “guilt” concept development are allocated: the Roman period (Roman private law), the pre-revolutionary period (Russian pre-revolutionary law) and the Soviet period (Soviet law). It is proved that the Roman law, by means of cases, managed to develop the basic conceptual apparatus of the institute of private legal liability, as well as principles of determining guilt as a fundamental criterion for such liability. It is proved that the subsequent development of civilisltic science and civil legislation in Russia testifies to the borrowing of the Roman law general principles regarding civil liability, and guilt as its condition. It is shown that in the Soviet period, the civil-legal concept of guilt evolved under the negative attitude to many provisions of the science of private law, developed in the pre-revolutionary period. Analysis of Chapter 25 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and, first and foremost, of Article 401 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, indicates that both the current state of the civil guilt doctrine and the legal definition of this category are based on the conceptual apparatus developed during many centuries. Scientific novelty: for the first time in the article, basing on the use of complex scientific methods, the concept and essence of the institute of guilt in private law are analyzed; three stages of the guilt doctrine formation are allocated and formed, as a precondition of civil-legal liability.Practical significance: the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in research and teaching when addressing the issues of the nature and formation of the “guilt” concept as a precondition of civil-legal liability.