The Method of Civil Law: Regulation, Evaluation or Modeling?

Introduction: the paper discusses the problems of reevaluating the methods of civil regulation. The author argues with the researchers who speak in favor of rejecting the use of the term “regulation” in a private law context and replacing it with modeling or evaluating public relations regarding property and non-materialized goods. The author of the paper believes that the issue of replacing the term “regulation” with “modeling” or “evaluation” is a dispute over terms. Law, as a social phenomenon, regulates public relations; however, the degree of influence of law on public relations depends on the national concept of legal regulation and the recognition of legal statuses for subjects of legal relations. Purpose: to prove the possibility of applying socio-legal methodology with attention to the social factors of the operation of legal norms, with preference over the prevailing normative and dogmatic understanding of law. Methods: the main research method used in the paper is the sociological method in jurisprudence, which allows a comprehensive assessment of the activities of the subject of legal relations, endowed with a situationally necessary civil status, and implementing this status in a specific legal context, established taking into account the interests of the subject and the existing legal order. Results: the author investigates the problem of exhausting the scientific and regulatory resources of the dogmatic understanding of law with its inherent metaphysical constructions of “method” and “subject” in favor of “revitalizing” the legal matter and overcoming the isolation of law on itself, to the detriment of the interests of society and the individual. Conclusions: as a result of the research, the author has developed a point of view on the need for a critical revision of the views prevailing in modern Russian civil law on how law operates in society, which generates legal “fetishism” that contradicts the principles of civil law. Russian civil law has sufficient potential to grant freedom to its subjects; in order to implement it, it is necessary to ensure the harmonious functioning of substantive and procedural law, convincing the judicial community of the value of the subjects of civil relations but not the forms of their participation in them.