Legal Nature of Ethics Codes of Professional Associations

Basing on modern theoretical development and analysis of current legislation of Ukraine, the article studies the system of social norms, their classification in the law literature, especially corporate norms, and their peculiarities compared to the rules of law by their origin, method of adoption, subjects to which they are applied, acts of will, form of external expression, specific nature of sanctions. The article suggests author’s own conception of the legal nature of the ethics codes of professional associations. Determination of the legal nature of the ethics codes of professional associations and their role in civil society depending on subjects who are covered by their action; of peculiarities of legal regulation of the relations associated with the ethical behavior of these subjects; determination of rules, standards, of their behavior with the third parties and in the structure of associations themselves. Professional ethics codes comprise ordered ethics prescriptions, which complement provisions of legislative acts, regulating activities of judges, procurators, lawyers, pharmacists, physicians, journalists and other representatives of important and socially significant occupations. The basic reasons conditioning adoption of ethics codes include practical unavailability to regulate on legislative level all the aspects of professional activity of associations by simple preservation of rights and obligations, without taking into account peculiarities of professional behavior of individual groups of specialists. Additionally, the mechanism of adoption of ethics codes without participation of the state is a method of harmonization of relations inside the civil society by the society itself, and it evidencing advantage of the private law over norms of the public law and is an index of the social maturity. 1. Social norms are the generic term, related to the legal and corporative norms. Corporative norms along with legal norms are the basic normative regulator in the society. 2. The difference of corporative norms from the other social norms consists in their subjective directivity (influence on set of individuals, which belong to definite professional association), methods of their setting (the norms are set by the corporate body, communicated to all participants of corporative relations and are effective upon their official cancellation or upon termination of activity of the organization itself), specific mechanism of corporative coercion. 3. By their own legal nature the ethics codes of professional associations are codified regulatory acts, adopted by the representatives of definite profession containing compulsory moral and ethical prescriptions, ordered in accordance with the specific nature of the activities of professionals union (association) and regulating professional behavior of its participants. 4. The initial normative material in creation of ethics codes are the corporative norms. In the process of regulation of professional association activities, the correlation between corporative norm and legal norm occurs, and it reflects in inclusion of corporative regulator to the mechanisms of legal regulation of social relationships. 5. Ethics codes of professional association are normative and not legal acts, they are adopted by the administrative bodies of professional associations, and not by government bodies, and their implementation is provided by non-juridical methods, which are peculiar only to them. In case when corporative norms of ethics code are used along with the legal norms of the definite sphere of law, the legal liability occurs. In ethics codes the prohibitive and obliging norms are prevailing.