The Concept and Characteristics of a Legal Action in Civil Law

The purpose of the article is a critical assessment of the established in the legal literature and practice the concept and characteristics of a legal action and criteria for distinguishing legal actions and events. The main problem identified by the author is that, despite the huge number of sources on this subject, jurisprudence has not progressed in the study of this phenomenon since the early 19th century. The definition and characteristics of a legal action «migrate» from one work to another, as a rule, without any critical analysis at all and are taken by lawyers as a given, which leads to stagnation in the development of the relevant field. At the same time, studies of specific varieties of legal actions often reach a deadlock precisely because of the incorrectly defined general characteristics of a legal action. The author defines the classification criterion of differentiation of legal facts, and argues the necessity of two-member division of legal facts into events and actions. It is proved that facts-states cannot be distinguished within the classification of legal facts on the volitional ground and they are not legal facts at all. The concept of legal action and its characteristics are given. The concept of will as a key element of legal action is discussed in the article and it is substantiated that «involuntary» actions are not legal facts. The author analyzes the classification of events into absolute and relative, and offers an algorithm for determining whether a certain legal fact refers to events or actions.