Knowledge Base “Land Law”
Land law - the branch of the legal system, which consists of legal rules implementing legal regulation of certain social relations in public management, use and protection of land in order to ensure sustainable use of land resources.
The subject of land law is the social relations, governed by land legislation, the subject of which is the land as the foundation of people's life. In this context, the land is:
- natural object,
- natural resource
- the principal means of production in forestry and agriculture,
- a spatial basis for other production activity.
A land as a natural object is organically linked with the other natural objects - forests, mineral resources, water resources, flora and fauna - that defines the interrelationship of relations governed by the land law, with other social relations related to the rational use and protection of natural resources, that, in turn, stipulates the organic connection between the land law with legislation of other natural resource sectors - environmental, forest, water, mineral resources, etc.
The land uniqueness as natural object is expressed in its properties: unmovability, irreplaceability, spatial limitation and the possibility of increasing the soil fertility like some valuable quality that is crucial for agriculture and forestry, as well as for society.
The land law subject specifics determine the specificity of the land law method, which can be named imperative-optional with dominance of imperative principles. The relations in land protection sphere are governed by the imperative: the participants have no right not to protect the land. Relations on land use along with general imperatives (e.g. the need to use land for specific purposes) have optional principles, like the ability to select a permitted use of land.
The rules of land law can be divided on:
- general and specific (special), which are included into the general and specific parts of the land law;
- mandatory and optional (with predominance of the first ones);
- protective, governing relations in the land protection area, and "non-protective", governing relations in the land use;
- legislative and rules in other sources of the land law.