Real Right

Real Right 

a subjective civil right; a variety of property rights. The subject matter of a real right is the thing in specie—that is, the thing that possesses special features characteristic of it alone.

A real right ensures the owner the opportunity to exert direct influence on an article: he does not require the actions of anyone else in order to possess, use, or dispose of an article. A real right belongs to the category of absolute rights. This means that as opposed to the subject of a real right there is an indeterminate number of persons who are obligated not to obstruct the exercise of the subject’s right. This obligation always consists of abstention from actions that prevent the implementation of the real right. In Soviet law, a real right includes the right of property, the right of-effective management, and the right of undisputed use of land. The content and all the forms of a real right are determined by the socialist relations of production prevailing in the USSR. A real right enjoys absolute protection; it is safeguarded by means of real actions aimed at the return or acquisition of a thing. A real right may also be safeguarded by bringing an action for dam-ages if an article is destroyed and cannot be restored in kind. Elements of real rights also characterize other forms of subjective civil rights, including liens and other relationships of the law of obligations (renting, storage, and so forth).

In the civil law of bourgeois states, there are several forms of a real right, the most important of which is the right of property. In addition, a real right includes the right to use another’s property and extract income from it—the so-called usufruct (France, Italy, and the Federal Republic of Ger-many [FRG]); easements—for example, the right of passage through another person’s plot of land (France, Italy, the FRG, and Japan); the right of lien on movable or immovable property (France, the FRG, Great Britain, the USA, and Japan); the building lease (the FRG) and, similar to this institution, the concept of superficies in the law of Italy and Japan, where there is also a real right of engaging in agriculture on a plot of land belonging to another person (emphyteusis); and estate service (the FRG)—the right to periodic payments in money or kind for a given plot of land. All these real rights may arise as a result of a contract concluded by the owner or on the basis of the will of a legator or a contract concluded by a previous owner of the property. In the civil law of Great Britain and the USA all forms of a real right, with the exception of the right of lien, are regarded as different kinds of the right of property.

REFERENCES

Grazhdanskoe pravo. Moscow, 1969.
Grazhdanskoe i torgovoe pravo kapitalisticheskikh gosudarstv, part 3. Moscow, 1966. Pages 160-66.

A. M. BELIAEVA