Prospects of Real Rights: Public Property vs. Unified Property Right

Abstract

In the domestic science, the notion of public property is gaining increasing popularity. It is proposed to develop in the normative acts the idea of a variety of forms of ownership and to recognize the public form of ownership as a special kind of relationship that needs special legal regulation. However, many specialists stand on opposite positions. They affirm in their studies the ideal of a unified property right with a single content for all owners. Such views are widespread among civil law experts. They are making efforts to improve civil legislation in a way that excludes not only the category of public property, but also the division of ownership into some form. This confrontation is not a normal phenomenon. It shows that there is no reliable theoretical basis for codifying not only property law, but also all Russian legislation. The choice should not be purely sectoral, it is necessary to find a common solution for Russian law. Since the separation of property into forms is enshrined in legislation, for many decades it has received a scientific justification, and today many are taken for granted, and the article focuses on alternative views. The article attempts to assess the succession of supporters of the unified property right in defending their ideas, the timeliness and practical value of their proposals. The author uses historical, comparative-legal methods of research: the division of property into forms in due time has affected many institutions of domestic law, and therefore the rejection of this division should be combined with the rejection of other concepts, constructions, and solutions that have become customary. The methodological basis of the study was a system analysis: the idea of a unified property right was critically evaluated from the point of view of its correspondence to another important concept, legal personality. It is concluded that the weak point of the position of the supporters of the unified property right is the discrepancy between their views on property and legal personality, their lenient attitude towards the three-member classification of subjects in civil law. A unified property right will help to raise the codification of property legislation to a qualitatively new level. But first of all the idea of a single legal personality must be established in our law. The first step in this direction will be the return of the Russian Federation, constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipal entities to the system of legal entities.