Incentive Rules as an Institution of Civil Law of Ukraine

Abstract

It is noted that incentive rules, if assessed by the methodology of legal influence, are an autonomous institute of civil law. These rules are neither part of the system of rules on civil liability nor of the system of rules on enforcement of obligations. There is no correlation between the rules on civil liability and the rules on ensuring proper performance of obligations, as well as incentive rules, as between general and special provisions or between legal phenomena, some of which are a kind and others are, respectively, a variety of the former. The regulatory grouping that forms the civil law institution of incentives includes not only legislative incentive provisions, but also incentive provisions (conditions) of private law contracts.

The basis for the institutional separation of statutory and non-statutory incentive provisions (incentive terms of private law contracts) is primarily the legal regulatory methodology. Its fundamental difference is that the application of civil liability measures and remedies to enforce obligations are examples of so-called negative enforcement, while the implementation of incentives is positive enforcement.

Incentives encourage obligated parties to fulfil their obligations not just properly (statistically normal), i.e. in compliance with only the minimum sufficient requirements, but with the maximum possible effort (most efficiently, quickly, economically in the interests of the legally entitled party to the legal relationship, etc.) When applying incentives to obligated parties to legal relations, such parties make their best efforts at their own discretion, i.e. this element of behaviour is their right, not their obligation.

Another specific feature of the regulatory effect of incentives is that, unlike civil liability and means of ensuring proper fulfilment of obligations, they are not aimed at restoring property or other losses of participants to civil legal relations, since the actual circumstances under which civil law incentives are applied are not related to the need to restore the property or other status of the injured persons.