Vol 12, No 2, 2013 pp. 145-159
UDC 347.4:17.036.2
THE TRUST IN COMMON LAW SYSTEMS: FUNCTIONS AND PHILOSOPHICAL CORRESPONDENCES
John Glover
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Email: john.glover@rmit.edu.au
Locating the origins of the thought on equity in European Antiquity (Aristotle) and pursuing its development from the 17th century to the present in countries with Anglo-Saxon civil law, the author offers a contemporary post-structural context to the application of the legal instrument of the trust, which has no equivalent in any other legal system. Already Aristotle recognized the potential of equity to act as a corrective of the general law. The trust is the applied form of equity in Anglos-Saxon Common Law systems. As doctrine, the trust eliminates the gap between property law and obligation which exists in Civil Law and thus propels itself into the domain of ethics. Functionally, the trust serves many diverse purposes, which extend from the care for the disabled, corporate finance, charitable giving and tax avoidance. In this article, anti-formalism and Pragmatism frame the theoretical basis of the legal instrument of the trust.
The trust behaves similarly to the process of meaning in the Pragmatist philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and is focused on the "outcomes" of actions. That is why the author offers the coinage "value-in-action" as a theoretical explanation of the trust. "Trusting" emerges as a vital component of modern trade which again suggests an ethical orientation of the trust. The author advances speculatively that the ethics of modern capitalism, which is invisible ("reclusive"), surfaces implicitly in the law of equity, whose instrument is the trust.
Key words: trust, beneficiary, common law, Pragmatism, C S Peirce, anti-formalism, value-in-action, ethics, deconstruction, genealogical method, property rights.
FUNKCIJA TRUSTA U SISTEMIMA CIVILNOG PRAVA U FILOZOFSKOM KONTEKSTU
Prateći razvoj trusta od antičke misli o pravičnosti (kod Aristotela), kroz njegovo rasprostranjenje od 17. veka na ovamo, u zemljama sa anglosaksonskim civilnim pravom, autor daje savremeni poststrukturalistički kontekst primeni pravnog instrumenta trusta, čiji se ekvivalent ne nalazi ni u jednom drugom zakonskom sistemu. Vec je Aristotel priznao potencijal zakona o pravičnosti da deluje kao korektiv opšteg zakona. Trust je primenjena forma pravičnosti u anglosaksonskim sistemima civilnog prava. Kao doktrina, trust eliminiše razliku koju civilno pravo vidi između imovinskog prava i obligacije i time se trust premešta u domen etike. Funkcionalno, trust služi raznovrsnim svrhama, koje se protežu od brige oko neosposobljenih lica, finansiranja korporacija, poklanjanja novca i imovine u dobrovoljne svrhe i izbegavanja poreze.
Anti-formalizam i pragmatizam uramljuju u ovom članku teoretsku osnovu pravnog instrumenta trusta. Trust se ponaša analogno procesu značenja u filozofiji pragmatiste Sanders-Pirsa (Charles Sanders Peirce) i usmeren je na "rezultate" akcije. Zato se u članku predlaže termin "value-in-action" (vrednost kao akcija) kao teoretsko objašnjenje trusta. "Poverenje" se pritom ispoljava kao bitna komponenta moderne trgovine što opet upućuje na etičku orijentaciju trusta. Autor predlaže spekulativno da se etika modernog kapitalizam, koja je nevidljiva, implicitno pomalja kroz zakon pravosuđa, čiji je instrumenat trust.
Ključne reči: Trust, beneficiar, civilno pravo, Pragmatizam, C. S. Peirce, anti-formalizam, vrednost-kao-akcija, etika, dekonstrukcija, genealogija, imovinsko pravo.
