The Legal Status of Consumers in Conditions of Differentiation of Legal Regulation of Public Relations

Currently, the legal regulation of public relations varies significantly depending on their participants. In particular, legal regulation is influenced by the consumer. However, there is no unambiguous definition of the concept of a “consumer” in legal acts, which gives rise to theoretical discussions and problems in enforcement. The purpose of the paper is to draw theoretical conclusions concerning the impact of a differentiated approach to legal regulation of the content of the legal status of consumers. Objectives of the study include: determination of validity of differentiating legal regulation of public relations, including legally binding relations; development of an approach to the identification of the general legal concept of the consumer; formation of a uniform model of the consumer’s legal status. In writing the paper, the author applied general scientific methods (system and functional methods, a group of logical methods such as deduction, induction, analysis, synthesis) and special legal methods (the formal legal method, the legal modeling method). The study concludes that the legal status of persons may vary according to such criteria as professionalism, association with business activity, connection with consumption. These criteria form a three-dimensional system, within which the legal status of a particular person is determined. In this sense, the qualification of a person as a consumer is possible due to the differentiation of legal regulation of relations according to one of the criteria (connection with consumption). It is substantiated that consumers are not only individuals who do not carry out business activities, but also individual entrepreneurs, legal entities, public legal entities, regardless of their professionalism and connection with business activities. The article proposes an approach according to which the process of consumption should equally influence the legal status of consuming persons due to a single criterion of differentiation with the preservation of the possibility of further differentiation by other criteria of legal significance. On the basis of the selection of the consumption criterion, the paper proposes a uniform model of the legal status of the consumer.