The Issue of Trust in Civil Law

Abstract

Public life transformation, including transformation caused by digitalization processes and expansion of remote interaction capabilities, determines changes in essential features of trust and conditions for its formation and manifistation. Today, the priority task is to create an environment of trust in the digital sphere and beyond it to ensure progress and social development. Various civil law mechanisms can contribute to this, including consistent implementation of the principle of good faith, development of the institute of business reputation, formation of civil law communities, including virtual ones with a special nature of interconnections, improvement and expansion of the use of blockchain technology. Trust formation should contribute to the implementation of a generally permissive method of civil law regulation of relations, including those arising in the digital sphere. Certain difficulties are associated with the fact that the concept of trust is not disclosed in the current legislation. The category of trust in civil law is usually considered in a narrow sense in relation to cases of personal trust relations between subjects when they make fiduciary transactions, although civil law also knows the concepts of fiduciary property, fiduciary duties and responsibility. Trust between the participants of the civil turnover is assumed, but its low level entails risks associated with the choice of a counterparty. In this regard, judicial practice develops a standard of prudent behavior expected from a reasonable participant in comparable circumstances, which is taken into account in tax legal relations. In the future, civil legislation and judicial practice should follow the path of improving the mechanisms of influencing public relations, contributing to the formation of an environment of trust and protection of participants in civil turnover from unfair and illegal actions.