The article analyzes the definitions of “corporate rights” and “corporate relations”. Attention is drawn to the shortcomings of the existing legal definitions of these concepts and proposals are made to change them.

It is noted that the legal definition of corporate rights is too broad, as it can apply to any business organization, including a unitary enterprise (public, municipal or private). Therefore, the author believes that corporate rights can belong only to the participant (founder, shareholder, member) of a corporate enterprise – a business association (except for full and limited partnerships) and a cooperative. Arguments are given regarding the unjustified attribution of cooperatives to business associations by the Civil Code of Ukraine.

It is concluded that corporate relations by their legal nature are economic (with property-economic and organizational-economic elements), and not civil relations. In support of this, the following arguments are given: the specific subject composition of corporate relations (the presence among the subjects of corporate relations of the bodies of the economic organization of the corporate type); lack of legal equality of subjects of corporate relations; mainly the organizational nature of corporate governance relations; the relative nature of property independence of the subjects of corporate relations.

Corporate relations are internal economic relations, the legal regulation of which should be carried out by the norms of economic (economic) legislation (first of all, the Economic Code of Ukraine and laws on certain types of companies and cooperatives), a sub-branch of which is corporate legislation. However, it is possible that over time, corporate law may be codified in the Corporate Code of Ukraine. Such codification would avoid unjustified duplication of norms for certain types of companies, would lead to a significant reduction in the number of rules about them and their unification, as well as would strengthen the principles of corporate governance (not only for joint stock but also other types of companies and cooperatives) at the level of law.

 It is argued that the recognition of corporate relations as a category of civil law may lead to the fact that cases in disputes arising from corporate relations, and covered by the concept of “cases in disputes arising in connection with business activities”, which are currently considered by the commercial courts of Ukraine (paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Article 20 of the Commercial Procedural Code of Ukraine) will be recognized as civil cases and consequently transferred to civil jurisdiction of general courts.

Bibliography

Authored books

1. Kontseptsiia onovlennia Tsyvilnoho kodeksu Ukrainy (ArtEk 2020).

 Edited books

2. Shcherbyna V, ‘Korporatyvnыe otnoshenyia kak predmet pravovoho rehulyrovanyia’ v Maidanyk R (red), Almanakh tsyvylystyky: sbornyk statei, vyp 1 (Pravova ednyst 2008) (in Russian).

Journal articles

3. Ivanyuta N, Kolosov R, ‘Korporatyvni prava: dualizm pravovoyi pryrody’ (2020) 6 Pravo i suspilʹstvo 27–33 (in Ukrainian).

 4. Shcherbyna V, ‘Pravova pryroda korporatyvnykh vidnosyn’ (2006) 7 Ukrayinske komertsiyne pravo 10–4 (in Ukrainian).

5. Symonyan Yu, ‘Pravova pryroda korporatyvnykh vidnosyn’ (2008) Aktualni problemy derzhavy i prava 268–72 (in Ukrainian).