DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17947114
title: ЧАСТНОПРАВОВЫЕ АКТЫ, ФАКТЫ И ЮРИДИЧЕСКИЕ КОНСТРУКЦИИ: НЕКОТОРЫЕ МЕТОДОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ЗАМЕЧАНИЯ

description: The article presents a methodological analysis of how private-law acts and facts function within legal constructions, arguing that legal facts are normative, teleologically explainable elements of subjective legal reality that must be distinguished from both natural facts and the constructions in which they operate.The author begins by distinguishing scientific “facts” as forms of empirical knowledge from legal facts as circumstances recognized by the legal order as grounds for legal consequences. It is emphasized that descriptive reality and normative prescriptions are not causally connected, so the truth of a norm cannot be derived from life circumstances, which necessitates rethinking traditional views on legal acts and facts.Legal facts are described as normative constructs whose model features are fixed in the hypothesis of a legal norm, while a norm itself appears as a statement describing permitted or prohibited behaviour and its consequences. The logical implication between hypothesis and disposition is not identical to the link that legal actors perceive between an actual event and ensuing legal consequences; that link arises from the nature of the norm rather than from causality.To explain why certain events function as grounds for legal consequences, the article invokes the notion of a “practical syllogism”, where the major premise expresses the goal, the minor premise connects an action to that goal, and the conclusion describes the resulting legal situation.This provides a teleological rather than purely causal model of explanation, aligning legal reasoning with purposive action and showing that the “cause” of a legal fact lies in the legal result (causa facti) it is meant to achieve.A key distinction is drawn between acts as volitional behaviours aimed at a legally protected result and facts as broader, sometimes non-volitional circumstances, both serving as central elements of legal constructions. Private-law acts (especially dispositive acts) are analyzed as outward manifestations of legally relevant will, whose interpretation must proceed via the structure and effects of the underlying juridical construction (such as a contract), not via psychological introspection.The article uses the doctrine of dispositive acts to clarify how transfer of property rights operates in causal systems, separating the obligation-creating contract from the act realizing the transfer. It argues that ignoring the autonomy of dispositive acts undermines the absolute effect of subjective rights and leads to conceptual errors in classifying contracts and understanding derivative versus original acquisition of ownership and good faith possession.Non-volitional facts, such as events or circumstances beyond a party’s control, are treated as mere preconditions that require a presupposed or expressed will to ground subjective rights. The article concludes that legal facts are forms of empirical knowledge about circumstances to which norms attach legal consequences; they belong to subjective reality, function as central nodes within legal constructions, and must not be conflated with those constructions themselves.