THE PROBLEM OF DIVIDING LAW INTO PRIVATE AND PUBLIC

The article critically rethinks the idea of dividing law into private and public in terms of its correspondence to the nature of law. The article analyzes the historical reasons for the appearance of this classification and its further use in Western legal culture, as well as in Russian legal science and legislation. The main task, according to the author, is not to bring theoretical foundations to the already existing basic legal classification, to clarify or modify the criterion for dividing law into private and public, formulated twenty centuries ago, but to correlate Ulpian’s formula with modern ideas about law, its essence, purpose, social nature, to establish the expediency and regularity of the existing division. As a result of the conducted research, it is concluded that the Roman basic division of law does not reflect the social nature of law, its essence and purpose, therefore it is necessary to look for other grounds for dividing legal spheres, to form a legal system that is not hostage to the historical past, is aimed at the future, at the socio-legal progress of mankind.