The functions of civil law are main directions of its impact on civil relations in order to compile and implement the latter. Main functions of this branch of law traditionally include: regulatory, protective and educational functions.
Sometimes this list looks a little different: regulatory, protective and preventive functions. Here it is meant that civil law generally performs functions inherent to law, but does it with its characteristic features.
This approach is essentially correct; however, in terms of possibility of overall assessment of functions of civil law, it can result in inadequate ideas of them, because it does not give a complete picture of the functional mechanism of this branch.
For these reasons, when characterizing features of civil law, it is appropriate to specify separately those functions that have general nature and those that are specific to this area.
While using this approach, we should distinguish:
1) general legal functions that appear at the level of civil law;
2) specific civilistic functions.[1]
General legal functions that appear at the civil level are the following:
1. Information-directing function. The task of acquaintance of subjects of civil relations with the concept of rights of a human (individual), principles of determining of the position of a private individual, general trends of legal regulation in this area, etc. So, orientation of subjects of civil law for a certain type of behavior, awareness of their rights and obligations by them take place. In the event of failure to perform this function, members of civil relations almost lose the opportunity to feel themselves subjects of private law, and therefore cannot fully exercise their civil rights and obligations;
2. Educational (cautionary-educational, preventive) function. This would involve development of respect for law in general, civil rights of other persons, law enforcement, etc. Failure to perform this function by civil law can lead to abrasion of boundaries between a right and “not right”, to violation of interests of other persons by subjects of civil relations, while exercising their civil rights;
3. Regulatory function. It consists in arrangement of civil relations, providing of rights and obligations to participants of these relations, establishing of rules of behavior of subjects of civil law;
4. Protective function. It performs tasks of protecting civil rights and interests from violations. This purpose is achieved by defining legal means of proper implementation of civil rights and obligations, establishment of measures of protection and responsibility for civil violations, etc.
Specific civilistic functions in the sphere of civil relations are as follows:
1. Authorizing function. Civil law creates a regulatory framework, prerequisites for self-regulation in the sphere of private law, determines the principles of internal control by agreement of parties of civil relations.
This function is a specific civilistic function, because only in this sphere, participants of relations may identify the rules of behavior, actually create normative acts of local action, etc.
The conceptual framework of this function is the maxim known to the Roman private law “Everything that is not explicitly prohibited by law is permitted”, which was and is now opposed to the provision of public law “Only that is directly stated in the law is permitted”;
2. Compensatory function. While exercising this function, possibility of resumption of the violated civil right and interest on the equivalent basis is ensured.
