Legal Liability as a Legal State: A New Theoretical Model and Its Practical Significance

The paper presents the author’s concept of legal liability, offering a solution to systemic problems in both general legal theory and the specific classification of its forms in civil law. The author consistently analyzes traditional approaches that reduce liability either to a measure of state coercion or to adverse consequences, demonstrating that such approaches lead to the unjustified conflation of liability with punishment. As an alternative, the study proposes a new theoretical framework defining legal liability as a distinct legal condition of the offender — an independent juridical fact arising at the moment the tort is committed. This condition constitutes the immediate basis for the emergence of a protective legal relationship within which a specific sanction is implemented (according to the sequence «offense → state of liability → punitive legal relationship»). This approach makes it possible to clearly distinguish liability from punishment, explain the inadmissibility of discretionary exemption from liability, and provide consistent criteria for resolving issues of legal succession.

1. Bratus S. Ya. Yuridicheskaya otvetstvennost i zakonnost (Ocherk teorii). — M.: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1976. — 216 s.

2. Grazhdanskoe pravo: uchebnik / pod red. A. P. Sergeeva, Yu. K. Tolstogo. — 6 e izd., pererab. i dop. — M.: TK Velbi, 2002. — T 1. — 784 s.

3. Grazhdanskoe pravo: uchebnik / pod red. A. P. Sergeeva, Yu. K. Tolstogo. — 6 e izd., pererab. i dop. — M.: Prospekt, 2005. — T. 1. — 765 s.

4. Duyunov V. K. Ugolovnoe pravo Rossii. Obshchaya i Osobennaya chasti: uchebnik / pod red. d-ra yurid. nauk, professora V. K. Duyunova. — 7 e izd. — M.: RIOR: Infra M, 2026.

5. Ioffe O. S. Obyazatelstvennoe pravo. — M.: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1975. — 880 s.

6. Ioffe O. S., Shargorodskiy M. D. Voprosy teorii prava. — M.: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1961. — 381 s.

7. Leyst O. E. Sanktsii v sovetskom prave. — M.: Gosyurizdat, 1962. — 246 s.

8. Samoshchenko I. S., Farukshin M. Kh. Otvetstvennost po sovetskomu zakonodatelstvu. — M.: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1971. — 240 s.

9. Khodyreva E. A. Pravo nasledovaniya v grazhdanskom prave Rossii: monografiya. — M.: Statut, 2022. — 386 s.