Article title Recodification of the Civil Code of Ukraine: Driving Factors and Prerequisites for the Launch
Authors

Doctor of Law, Professor, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine) adovgert@yahoo.com

Name of magazine Legal journal «Law of Ukraine» (Ukrainian version)
Issue 1/2019
Сторінки [27-41]
DOI 10.33498/louu-2019-01-027
Annotation

The article aims at ascertaining the presence or “maturity” of certain factors and prerequisites for launching the process of recodification of the Civil Code of Ukraine (Ukraine’s CC). Using the term “recodification”, the author means systemic essential substantive and structural innovations to the current code (or a group of codes and laws), without creating a new one. The need for recodification of Ukraine’s CC has arisen given the logic of a further transformation of society, namely the building of an honest and effective market economy as an integral part of civil society. Today, Ukraine’s orientation towards the European integration is also the most significant factor of reforms in all sectors of society. We can even say that the main target of Ukraine’s CC recodification is further “Europeanization” of the Code. A global (especially European) trend towards unification and harmonization of private law regulation has become the key factor in the modern recodification of civil codes of many countries, including Ukraine. Through the efforts of hundreds of European experts, the most optimal legal rules (solutions) suitable on an around-the-globe basis have been found for many areas of relations under private law. Such rules/solutions have been embodied in numerous international instruments aimed at private law unification. Given the current qualitative state of the latter, we can come to the conclusion that the international model of reforms is “matured” enough to be a factor of recodification. Another important factor calling for recodification of Ukraine’s CC are the latest reforms of private law in the European Union countries, in particular, development and adoption of new codes and laws, modernization of the “old” civil law codifications in the light of European and universal international instruments. Today, the ability of the national doctrine of civil (private) law to “take the lead of” and provide the scientific framework for the reformation process becomes a necessary prerequisite for generating the concept and the normative text of the recodification draft of Ukraine’s CC. Noting the inconsistency of some parameters of the national civil law science with the European approaches, the author believes that in general it is “capable” of ensuring the process of Ukraine’s CC recodification. As for its extent, in the author’s opinion, systemic essential changes and structural innovations take place not only in the sections of the law of obligations, but also in all books of the Code.

 

Keywords recodification of the Civil Code; targets, factors and prerequisites of recodification; international instruments for the unification of private law; reforms of private law in the European Union countries; national doctrine of civil law
References

List of legal documents
Legislation 

  1. Tsyvilnyi kodeks Ukrainy [The Civil Code of Ukraine]: Zakon Ukrainy [the Law of Ukraine] vid 16 sichnia 2003 r. № 435-IV (accessed: 24.12.2018) (in Ukrainian). 

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