Abuse of Civil Rights: Doctrinal Approaches, Forms, and Mechanisms of Restriction in the Practice of the Supreme Court and the ECHR

Abstract

Contemporary legal practice increasingly encounters situations in which parties to legal relationships, while formally acting within the law, use their subjective rights not for their intended purpose, but as a tool to cause harm to others, delay court proceedings, evade liability, or conceal assets. This phenomenon, known as “abuse of rights,” creates a disconnect between the “letter” and the “spirit” of the law, undermining the principles of good faith, justice, and the rule of law. Despite the legislative prohibition of abuse of rights enshrined in Article 13 of the Civil Code of Ukraine and the general principles of civil legislation, a number of unresolved issues remain in practice: there is no legal definition of vexatious litigation, approaches to classifying specific forms of abuse are not standardized, and the court’s response mechanisms are often insufficiently effective, especially under martial law, when the number of bad-faith manipulations is on the rise. 

In academic and legal practice, there is still no unified doctrinal position on the legal nature of the abuse of rights. At the same time, new forms of such abuse are becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly in the digital environment. National law enforcement requires proper adaptation to the standards of the European Court of Human Rights, which consistently develops criteria for assessing abuse of the right to file a complaint and prohibits the use of Convention rights for purposes contrary to democratic values. In addition, the Supreme Court is actively developing its case law, having defined the characteristics of procedural abuse in a series of rulings, distinguished between the abuse of substantive and procedural rights, and specified the grounds for recognizing legal acts as fraudulent. These circumstances necessitate a comprehensive analysis of doctrinal approaches, forms of abuse, and mechanisms for their limitation in light of the practice of the Supreme Court and the ECHR, which is the subject of this article.