Self-Help in Civil Law: A Form of Civil-Law Authorization and the Object of Protection

The paper is devoted to an examination of the legal nature of self-help within the framework of civil law. The study provides a critical analysis of approaches in civil-law doctrine to defining this category, with particular emphasis on the debated issue of whether self-help should be characterized as a method of exercising a particular civil-law entitlement. The discussion centers on the conformity of methods of self-help with the nature of subjective civil rights, secondary rights, and other legal forms. The paper substantiates the thesis that the implementation of self-help measures is mediated predominantly by factual rather than juridical acts, which renders self-help incompatible with the conventional mechanism for exercising subjective rights. The conditions for the lawfulness of self-help measures are examined in detail, including their connection with substantive, legally significant facts and the principle of proportionality. Particular attention is devoted to defining the object of civil-law protection in the context of self-help. The traditional approach, which reduces protection to the protection of a subjective right, is challenged, and the necessity of recognizing a legally protected interest as the sole object of protection is argued. The influence of a tendency in judicial practice toward the eclectic amalgamation of self-help measures with various legal institutions (juridical acts, secondary rights, and others) on the theoretical consolidation of this legal phenomenon is analyzed. In light of the foregoing arguments, the paper advances the hypothesis that self-help may be most adequately interpreted as an element of the dynamic legal capacity of a civil-law subject, requiring further theoretical elaboration and empirical verification.

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