Individual Ñontract as a Form of Law and its Normativity

Magushov Sergei Vladislavovich ORCID: 0000-0002-0771-3164 postgraduate, department of theory of state and law, Kutafin Moscow State Law University 125993, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya str., 9 sergei.maguschov@yandex.ru

Introduction. The issue of the normativity of the contract has been debatable in the theory of law for a considerable period of time. This problem, it seems, is still far from being resolved, despite the significant amount of attention that is being paid to it. The dynamics of views in the domestic theoretical and legal thought regarding which contracts are normative is interesting here. If you carry out a retrospective analysis, you can find the following key change – the expansion of the list of what is considered a regulatory agreement. In the early 2000s, as a rule, contracts between public legal entities and collective agreements between employees and employers were recognized as normative contracts - yet other contracts were not considered forms (sources) of law ^{[1, p.532],[2, p. 57]}. After about fifteen years, the status of normativity was already assigned to a number of contracts in civil law – for example, public contracts ^{[3, p. 253]}, or without specifying a specific type of such contract ^{[4, p. 339]} – the list of forms (sources of law) has significantly expanded. Moreover, the comparison is made exclusively within the framework of one class – established views, views that exist, if we use Kuhn's conceptual apparatus, within the framework of normal science. It seems rational to consider such developments specifically in the educational literature, since nothing that goes beyond the generally accepted framework usually gets there, since such knowledge has not yet passed the test of time and has not found significant support from the scientific community. The construction "usually does not fall" was used here for good reason, because, firstly, as is commonly believed, any induction is always incomplete - in other words, a sequence of data confirming a particular hypothesis can be very long, however, this does not guarantee that such linearity will continue. Secondly, in this particular case, such data interrupting the sequence are available to us, which suggests that even educational literature in some cases may contain views that go beyond the previously mentioned normal science. In this case, this was expressed in the recognition of the status of a form (source) of law for any individual contract, since individual norms of law are generated in the process of its conclusion ^{[5, p. 12]}. However, using Weber's conceptual apparatus, it seems reasonable to believe that the views we are considering, characteristic of the domestic theoretical and legal thought of the early two thousand years, are a kind of "ideal type". In other words, to a certain degree of reduction (without taking into account the data that differ from the overwhelming majority), it can be assumed that neither contracts in labor law nor contracts in civil law were recognized by the domestic theoretical and legal thought of that time as normative. After about fifteen years, as noted earlier, the discourse has shifted towards an expanded interpretation of what is a normative contract.  

In other words, one can observe a gradual shift, the evolution of positions towards the recognition of normativity for a large number of types of prescriptions. For contracts that were previously traditionally considered individual, this seems important, since the recognition of normativity for them means the recognition of the status of a form of law for contracts in civil and labor law. Of course, as will be seen later, it is difficult to talk about all contracts within these industries without exception, however, the status of a form of law can be recognized for a significant part of such contracts. In what directions is it necessary to move in the further development of the problem of the normativity of contracts, which are still often recognized as not containing regulatory regulation, how is it necessary to carry out research?

The study is proposed to be divided into four structural elements. The first structural element is necessary to indicate the paradigm within which the experimental data obtained will be conceptualized. It should be noted at once that the work will be carried out within the framework of the previously mentioned science. This is one of the most important stages, since it is necessary to indicate which agreements will be considered axiomatic. The provisions reached in the course of this agreement, therefore, will not be in doubt (within the framework of this paradigm). This is extremely important in relation to definitions. It is necessary to choose which conceptual apparatus will be used in the future – it will depend on how we interpret the experimental data obtained. With regard to this study, this is expressed in the concept of normativity, as one of the main features of law. In the absence of normativity, in the sense that will be indicated in the first part of this study, the entity under study, claiming the status of a form of law, will no longer be able to be called such. This statement is true, of course, only from the point of view of the paradigm whose conventions are used. Outside of this approach, where there are other sets of rules, views, such a conclusion can no longer be accepted. In addition, the logic will also be outlined, which will be used to justify the existence of regulatory regulation in contracts that were previously considered purely individual regulation. In other words, an idea has been formulated that will help to see forms of law in contracts in civil and labor contracts, without going beyond the limits of normal science.

The second and third sections are functionally identical – they both aim to make arguments in favor of the existence of normativity in individual contracts and, as a consequence, recognition of their status as a form of law. This will be done by conceptualizing the relevant empirical data. The second section will focus on the study of the employment contract, the third section – on the study of the civil contract. As you can see, there is no fundamental difference, except for the branch of law, where the data comes from. Moreover, within the framework of this study, this difference does not seem to matter, therefore, a civil contract can be considered according to the same pattern as an employment contract. In this sense, an employment contract, again resorting to the conceptual apparatus of sociological science, will be an ideal type – it can be used as a model that is identical to a certain degree of reduction to the subject of interest to us. In this case, such a subject, considered by analogy, is a civil contract.

If the first, second and third sections were connected to each other, each subsequent section relied on the previous one (the second on the first, the third on the second), forming a single formation together, then the fourth section will be knocked out of this sequence. This is due to the objectives of this section. The first three sections were intended to justify the existence of regulatory regulation in an individual contract, using a set of agreements adopted within the framework of the dominant paradigm. The fourth section will allow you to get rid of these agreements, go beyond the paradigm within which you had to work earlier, not accept its "rules", thereby freeing yourself from a number of dogmas. This, of course, allows you to look at the analyzed subject differently, to see in it qualities that were not visible before, since they were simply defined differently. Summarizing the above, in the fourth section an attempt will be made to offer a different understanding of the concept of normativity.

1. There is a generally accepted agreement in legal science that one of the key features of a rule of law is its normativity. So, speaking about the norms of law, S. V. Boshno notes that they have a number of specific features that distinguish them from other social norms – among these features, it is the sign of normativity that is in the first place. Scientists note that normativity consists in the presence of general rules of conduct that are not created to regulate a specific legal relationship, and do not cease to be effective after the termination of this very legal relationship ^{[6, p. 50]}. Proceeding from this, the cornerstone for the recognition of normativity behind the provisions of an individual contract is that these provisions do not apply to an indefinite, wide range of persons, but to a narrow, certain circle of subjects. Moreover, such provisions cease to apply after the termination of the contract. In other words, the main argument in favor of not recognizing the status of a form of law for an individual contract is that it does not create general rules of conduct.

         The easiest way to solve this problem is a simple reworking of the conceptual apparatus – in other words, going beyond the established agreements, going beyond the limits of normal science. However, based on the above reasoning, this will not be done in this section – we will resort to this approach later. Returning to the framework of the established paradigm, without trying to rebuild the established agreement, and here, in recognition of the fact that the individual contract contains the norms of law, that is, it has normativity, serious mass advances have been outlined. More and more often you can find works whose authors talk about an individual contract as a form of law – such works will be considered later. However, we are not talking about the most common type of individual contract – a civil contract, but about an employment contract. Of course, there are similar trends in the recognition of the status of a form of law for any individual contract. However, it is still difficult to call them so noticeable if compared with the number of votes for a specific type of individual contract – an employment contract.

         Let's start by using the formal-dogmatic method. The labor legislation contains provisions that can be interpreted as the fact that an employment contract, at least in some part, has normativity. Part 1 of Article 9 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation (hereinafter - the Labor Code of the Russian Federation) says that "in accordance with labor legislation, the regulation of labor relations and other directly related these relations can be carried out through the conclusion, modification, addition by employees and employers of collective agreements, agreements, employment contracts." Some representatives of legal science interpret this provision as an employee joining the existing rules of an employer, which regulate labor relations ^{[7, p.85]}. Scientists mention the term "joining" – here we are talking about the fact that an employee entering into an employment relationship, by signing an employment contract, can receive for the most part not individual regulation of legal relations between him and the employer, but be "attached" to regulatory regulation. Such regulation consists in the presence in the employment contract not of provisions of individual regulation, but of provisions that can already be attributed to regulatory regulation, since the rules of conduct for employees within the company can be established by various corporate acts to which the employment contract will refer. Thus, we can say that even if not the entire employment contract can be recognized as regulatory regulation, but we can definitely say that it contains a component of regulatory regulation together with individual regulation.

         It is also possible to refer to Part 2 of Article 5 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation as confirmation of the hypothesis of the normativity of the employment contract, using the formal dogmatic method, this norm is essentially synonymous with the one previously considered. The provision contained there says that "labor relations and other directly related relations are also regulated by collective agreements, agreements and local regulations containing labor law norms." Although this provision does not directly affect the subject of interest to us – the employment contract, however, it indirectly confirms the normativity of the employment contract (or at least part of it), fixing the possibility of regulating labor relations with a number of other documents. The provisions that will be included in such documents will then be reflected in specific employment contracts by referring to them in the text of a particular employment contract – the same "accession" that was previously discussed. Thus, the share of individual regulation in the employment contract, if not reduced to zero, is significantly reduced, giving way to regulatory regulation.

         As for contracts in civil law, it is also possible to use the previously indicated logic to justify the existence of regulatory regulation in employment contracts. We are talking about the same existence of provisions that are not created directly by one or another civil law contract individually for a specific legal relationship, but are contained in local regulations of one of the parties to the contract. Here, however, the question naturally arises what to do with contracts in which the parties do not have any local regulations, and the provisions are created by them really individually for this legal relationship. It is for the purpose of substantiating normativity in such cases that the fourth section is introduced, since it is not possible to see regulatory regulation in such contracts within the framework of the dominant paradigm. It is necessary to take a different set of agreements and analyze the data based on these rules.

         2. Now we have to consider the question of how the normativity of the employment contract, the "joining" of employees to the local regulations of the employer looks in practice – to confirm the hypothesis put forward inductively, verify it to turn it into a theory. As an example, let's consider three employment contracts of three interconnected (they all have one "parent" company) firms located in the city of Tver (due to the need to comply with corporate secrecy and confidentiality rules, documents and the real name of the organization are absent in the work). The section devoted to the working time mode consists of one sentence and fully refers to the local regulations of the employer (with the exception of the provisions of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation): "Working time mode (duration of the working week, duration of daily work (shift), start and end time, work breaks, number of shifts per day, alternation working and non-working days) and rest time in the Organization are established in accordance with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the internal Labor Regulations of the Organization, local regulations of the Organization, taking into account the nature of production activities, are determined by work schedules, shift schedules approved by the Employer. "

         As for setting the amount of wages, although it is set individually in a number of cases, however, in another number of cases it is just an appearance. The amount of wages is often a non–controversial provision of the employment contract - it is fixed in the local regulatory act of the employer, called the staffing table. There are no provisions in employment contracts stipulating that the amount of wages is set in accordance with the specified local regulatory act. However, it must be recognized that in some cases there is not an individual, but a normative character, even in this part of the employment contract. The employee "joins" the provisions of the employer's local regulatory act regulating wages for various categories of employees (such an act is adopted at the end of the current year for the next year). In other words, in some cases, the wording "an employee is paid an official salary of 30,000 rubles" is identical to the wording "an employee is paid an official salary, the size of which is determined by the relevant local regulatory act of the employer."

         In some cases, there are vacancies with salary formulations that give more reason to believe that even the provisions of an employment contract on wages are normative, and not individual. In the vacancy market of the Tver region, there are quite a large number of offers with wages indicated in the form of "from 30,000 to 30,000 rubles" (data taken from the vacancy aggregator HH.ru and are shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1 – demonstration of the regulatory regulation of the salary of employees

Of course, this does not mean that the possibility of individual regulation of this provision of the employment contract is cut off (the opportunity to discuss this parameter at an interview), but there is also a possibility that the employee will either have to "join" the provisions of the local regulatory act of the employer regulating the issue of wages, or not to join if he does not I agree with the conditions offered to him. Such vacancies were also offered by firms whose employment contracts are analyzed in this article – however, for reasons of confidentiality, such data are not provided.The following provision is, like the previous one, in the section regulating the issues of the employee's remuneration conditions.

The wording is as follows: "The employer may establish incentive and compensation payments (surcharges, allowances, bonuses, etc.). The amounts and conditions of such payments are determined by the Regulations on Remuneration and bonuses of employees of the Organization." As can be seen from the above example, again there is a normative nature.

         The largest number of provisions testifying to the normativity of the employment contract is contained in the section on the rights, duties and responsibilities of the employee. The list of these provisions is as follows:

- "Conscientiously fulfill labor duties defined in the official (working) instructions for his position (profession, specialty), ETCS, Qualification directory of positions and professions, Internal Labor Regulations, orders and other local regulations of the Organization, the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, in the current regulatory and legislative acts of Russia."

- "Comply with the internal labor regulations of the Organization and other local regulations of the Employer."

- "To observe labor discipline and comply with labor standards if they are established by the Employer." It is not indicated here that the establishment takes place precisely in local regulations, and not individually, in the format of specific instructions to one or another employee, however, it seems that we are talking about local regulations.

- "Comply with the procedure established by the Employer for storing documents and material valuables." The same remark as to the previous position).

- "Not to disclose information constituting the Employer's trade secret. Information that is a trade secret of the Employer is defined in the Regulation on the Trade Secret of the Organization."

- "In case of non-fulfillment or improper fulfillment by an Employee of his duties specified in this contract, violation of labor legislation, Internal labor regulations of the Employer, other local regulations of the Employer, as well as causing material damage to the Employer, the Employee bears disciplinary, material and other liability in accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation."

         These provisions are contained in all three employment contracts – moreover, these contracts are almost complete copies of each other. The exceptions here are the full name of the employee, the indication of who the employer is, and the amount of wages – this is not surprising, since all three firms are managed by the same parent company. This raises the question, even if not about the complete absence of elements of individual regulation in such employment contracts, but about the degree of such regulation, the ratio of individual and regulatory types of regulation. Speaking about the fact that an employment contract still cannot be recognized as fully normative, it is necessary to understand that an employee has the opportunity to add, change or remove some provisions that he does not want to accept.

         If we refer to the three labor contracts under consideration, the employee (work on them was an external part-time job) removed the provisions on business trips, work on one of the days off and a six-day working day from them. However, in these specific cases, these provisions should not have been there due to the specifics of the work. The work that the employee had to do in these three cases has nothing to do with business trips, work on a day off, and the working day is eight hours. These provisions were there, according to the available hypothesis, by mistake - if we talk about working on one of the days off and a six-hour working day (there are no such provisions in the approved standard employment contract). The provision on business trips migrated to these contracts from the sample employment contract approved in these firms.

         The main part, the "framework" of the contract, is obviously non-controversial and the employee accepts it "as is" (or does not accept the provisions contained there). This still returns to the question of the relationship between the two types of regulation – individual and regulatory, since the sample of an employment contract approved by the personnel department (not to mention the provisions of the employer's local regulations, with the provisions of which the employee also agrees by signing an employment contract), which the employee must accept or not accept, is difficult to attribute to the act, in which individual regulation prevails.

         Summing up the consideration of the ratio of individual and regulatory types of regulation in employment contracts, the author believes that this ratio depends on the size of an employer. The larger the company's size, the greater the share of regulatory regulation in employment contracts offered by such a company. The three employment contracts discussed earlier relate to small firms, however, these firms are "subsidiaries" of a company that, in accordance with subclause b of clause 2 of Part 1.1 of Article 4 of Federal Law No. 209 "On the Development of small and Medium-sized Businesses in the Russian Federation" ^[8] is a large enterprise, since it has an average number of employees for the previous calendar year above the limits set there – 250 employees (it does not fall under the exceptions provided for in paragraphs 2.1 and 2.2 of Part 1 of Article 4 of the specified Federal Law). This correlation can be explained by the fact that large enterprises inevitably come to the presence of a significant number of local regulations regulating all activities within the company. There is a maximum unification of the processes taking place inside the enterprise, so there can be no question of an individual approach to each employee – it's just inefficient. In small enterprises, these processes have not yet been established, the number of employees still allows for extensive use of individual regulation.

         Returning to the question of whether an employment contract can be considered a form of law, it is necessary to note the position of L. Y. Bugrov. The scientist, speaking for the normativity of the employment contract and, as a consequence, the recognition of its form of law, appealing to the previously considered concept of "accession", uses the term "normative agreement" in relation to the employment contract ^{[9, p. 53]}. In other words, an employment contract refers to regulatory contracts – indeed, if an employment contract contains regulatory regulation in addition to individual regulation, then if it does not fully become a regulatory contract, then at least the question of a "mixed" type of legal regulation is raised.

         Summing up the consideration of the issue of the normativity of the employment contract, it is necessary to consider another aspect. If the issue of finding general, not individual provisions in an employment contract has been resolved, then how to confirm that the norms contained in such an agreement continue to apply after the termination of the contract itself. This is a cornerstone that also stands in the way of recognizing the existence of a regulatory type of regulation in an employment contract. The answer to this question seems to have already been found – it is necessary to refer again to the local regulations of the employer, the provisions of which are contained in employment contracts.

As noted earlier, employment contracts often do not contain any individual regulation either at all, or contain only some part - the provisions contained there are not created for a specific employee, but are taken from local regulations of the employer. In such cases, an employment contract is only a kind of "guide" to the relevant provisions of certain acts of the employer, bringing them to the attention of a potential employee. An employment contract may not create any rules of conduct at all, since there is no individual regulation. In other words, an employment contract in such cases, after the termination of its existence, being only a tool for communicating information contained in local regulations of the employer, does not entail the termination of the norms that it contains, since it did not generate them, but only "relayed".

         3. In civil law contracts, a similar situation has developed with the one that exists in labor contracts - not just the role of regulatory regulation is great, but it often prevails over individual regulation. Based on this, it is necessary to make an analysis that was made with the employment contract, namely, an analysis of the ratio of regulatory and individual types of regulation. The same issue now needs to be transferred to the plane of civil law contracts. The study will be carried out on the example of contracts for the provision of paid services, since the empirical base here is as large as possible.

There are two aspects to consider here – firstly, it is the presence of a significant number of standard contracts that are simply provided to the other party and they are offered to either "join" them or not. The situation is similar to the one that exists with standard employment contracts, which are characteristic not even for medium–sized enterprises, but also for small ones - cardinal processing of the terms of such contracts is not carried out, they are accepted "as is". This is seen as one of the elements of the unification and standardization of the activities of enterprises, which, in turn, reduces its costs for potential processing of contracts for each specific case.

         Secondly, there is also a reference to various local regulations of a particular company. Speaking about contracts for the provision of paid services, this can be illustrated by the fact that the price of services rendered in the vast majority of cases is not a debatable point. All prices are contained in the relevant local regulations of firms providing services, and are either accepted by the other party, or not. The customer simply does not have the opportunity to change the cost of the service provided in such cases. Thus, it is not possible to talk about individual regulation in such cases – regulation again becomes normative. This trend is typical not only for large or medium-sized companies, but also for firms that have several employees in their staff. The cost of the services provided in a significant number of cases there will also be determined not in the order of individual regulation, but by accepting or not accepting the prices contained in the local regulatory act of this company.

         This situation can also be explained by the desire to unify, standardize the processes taking place within the company, reducing costs in this way – for example, the same time spent by accountants or specialists who communicate with customers and will have to spend a lot of time discussing the price of the service provided. Under the current paradigm, this process happens extremely quickly – the customer either signs the contract or not, since in some cases he cannot simply change anything there. A striking example of this practice is the sphere of medical services – when communicating with the administrator, there is no change in the price of the service received by the customer and other provisions of the contract. Everything happens in such situations extremely quickly – the customer signs the contract that was provided to him or does not sign it. Considering the number of clients of companies of this profile, when it is necessary to finish work with one client extremely quickly by signing a contract with him for the provision of paid services, otherwise there will be significant material losses. The hypothesis put forward about the need to standardize, unify business processes by bringing regulatory regulation to the forefront receives empirical confirmation.

         Also, as an empirical basis confirming the existence of regulatory regulation in civil law contracts, one can cite as confirmation, for example, relations in the field of health services (we are not talking here about the provision of medical services). By concluding a contract for the provision of paid services with a particular fitness center, the customer is forced to agree with the prices that are fixed in the relevant local acts of the company providing the services. There is no individual regulation in this matter. In addition to the local act of the enterprise containing prices for the services provided, the customer in this case, by signing a contract for the provision of paid services, also accepts the safety regulations contained also in the local acts of the company. The same can be said about the rules of that institution (for example, the rules of conduct on the territory of the pool), familiarization with which the customer confirms by entering into contractual relations – these rules are also found in local acts.

          4.What about contracts in civil and labor law, which cannot be called standard, which do not contain references to local regulations, which really contain only individual regulation and are made for a specific person. Thus, there is no sign of normativity necessary to classify them as a form of law. However, it is not possible to attribute them to a form of law only within the framework of the normal science we mentioned earlier, which in some cases can be called dogmatic, operating with dogmas and not wanting to go beyond these dogmas, not perceiving the exits of others beyond these limits.

         Now it's time to go beyond the established agreements and look at the subject in a new way. As noted earlier, science is based on the principle of conventionalism (or multiconventionalism, since there are many agreements). It seems that the concepts "in themselves" do not exist, there are various agreements of scientists about what content to put into a particular definition. The very wording of the definition of law, and based on this, and what is right and what is not, is an agreement of scientists. Thus, it is possible to change the definition of what rights are to a more convenient one for representatives of a particular paradigm. Since no definition is true and does not reflect the essence that it names in the only correct way, then it is impossible to say that this definition can not be used, or else it is possible, it is not necessary.

         Law is the rules of conduct protected by the state. Based on this definition of the concept of law, any individual contract that does not violate the requirements of the law and, therefore, is protected by the state, can be recognized as a form of law. The sign of normativity of law can be interpreted literally as the content of the law of norms of behavior (normativity – norms), and proceed from the fact that norms of behavior and rules of behavior are identical categories. The obligatory property of normativity (within the framework of the current agreement on what normativity is), which consists in the fact that norms, rules of conduct must necessarily be extended to a wide range of addressees and not limited in time, and not be aimed at regulating individual legal relations, can not be recognized for the convenience of a new definition. Thus, if we follow this path, go beyond the normal science in the matter of understanding the essence of normativity – to answer in the affirmative the question of whether an individual contract is a form of law seems to be fully justified.

         Let us turn to the works of scientists whose views are similar to the position considered earlier. D. R. Leshchuk believes that individual contracts are legal acts expressing a certain number of separate expressions of will. The scientist then notes that if a legal act is recognized as a form (source) of law, then an individual contract, being a legal act, also receives the status of a form (source) of law ^{[10, p. 117]}. It is hard not to agree with the indicated logic.

I. I. Andrianovskaya, discussing the levels of legal regulation of labor relations, comes to the conclusion that there are three such levels: centralized, social-partner (collective-contractual), individual-contractual ^[11]. Recognizing the status of legal regulation for the individual contractual level, the scientist sees the form (source) of law in the employment contract.

T. V. Kashanina, speaking about an individual contract, talks about three levels of legal regulation – national, local and individual ^{[12, p. 109]}. With the recognition of the existence of the level of individual legal regulation, any individual contract will be a form of law, that is, it will contain the norms of law or, in other words, it will be a normative contract. Thus, there should be no need to divide all contracts into normative and not, since they will all be normative. It will only be possible to single out the level of their normativity.

In his other work, the scientist, continuing to defend the position of recognizing the status of a form of law for any individual contract, points out that Roman lawyers understood the contract as a law for two. By this they wanted to emphasize that an individual contract has normativity, since they develop rules of conduct – law, but these rules of conduct apply exclusively to the parties to a particular contract. Further, the scientist points out that the nature of such norms does not prevent them from being recognized as a right, since in the event of a dispute and an appeal to the court, the court will also take into account the agreements that were reached by the parties under the contract (provided that they do not contradict legislative norms). This allows us to talk about the recognition of the status of legal norms for contractual norms ^{[13, p. 24]}. Indeed, if we understand law as rules of conduct recognized by the state and protected by it, and this is how the concept of law can be interpreted based on the content of the statement, then contracts in which there is no regulatory regulation are a form of law.   

         However, a reservation should be made here – such a right will in no way compete with the right that is created by another law–making entity - the State. The law created by the state sets the limits for the law, which will then be created by other law-making entities within the established framework. Of course, the law of other law-making entities cannot go beyond the framework outlined by the law created by the state, but it operates within this framework. The law created by other subjects of law-making, thus, concretize the law of the state, one might even say, fills the space within its borders with life. State law does not directly participate in the regulation of a huge number of relations on the ground, as it sets only general outlines. These outlines are filled with concrete content by another law operating at the "second" level, within the boundaries designated by the "first" level (state law) – such a right is an individual contract.

         Conclusion. Summarizing all the above, it seems reasonable to believe that private law contracts, both civil and labor, have not only individual, but also a regulatory type of regulation. Normativity is expressed in the presence of rules of conduct in contracts that were not created specifically for the other party to the contract, but existed before that – for example, in local regulations of the employer, if we are talking about an employment contract. The same can be said about a civil law contract, the provisions of which in a significant number of cases are not individual regulation, since they are also not created to regulate a specific legal relationship, but are generated by local regulations and do not imply changeability for a specific case. Moreover, such provisions, as has been demonstrated, do not cease to be in effect after the termination of the contract, which also allows us to speak about the normativity of contracts previously considered individual. However, it is not necessary to say that private law contracts are completely devoid of individual regulation, since along with general provisions there are also individual provisions that were created to regulate a specific legal relationship. This is true for both a civil contract and a labor contract. Thus, it seems reasonable to talk about the synthesis of individual and regulatory types of regulation in one contract – the quantitative ratio of these types of regulation differs depending on the example under study. The views postulating the incompatibility of an individual contract and regulatory regulation, according to the author, are currently insufficiently substantiated. As for a different view of the problem of the normativity of an individual contract, an attempt to go beyond the dominant paradigm was made for the first time not within the framework of this work. This is a continuation of a long-established scientific tradition within the framework of modern theoretical and legal thought. However, despite certain achievements of this approach, it seems that there are still quite a few difficulties ahead, on the way to its wide acceptance.