The Objectives of Litigation Costs in Civil Procedure

For a long time, the topic of the cost of the legal proceedings received unjustifiably little attention from Russian, as well as foreign researchers. The lawyers all over the world, having quickly developed the main ideas for application of judicial expenses mainly based on moral grounds, abandoned the topic. Over the last 20 years the situation has changed. The institution of judicial expenses underwent a transformation, becoming the institution the aims, purposes and legal essence of which are now hotly debated. In this paper, the author aims to clarify the legal essence and the main objectives of the institution of judicial expenses in arbitration process, which may have already been or are set by legislators or court practice. Economic analysis of the law is often applied to show the consequences of practically applying certain norms, regulating the exaction of judicial expenses. This paper focuses on the model of the optimal defense of law on the question of legal expenses. The author comes to the conclusion that the mixed strategy is the most preferable. When the sides have the opportunity to reach an agreement - when they are not far from each other, have economic connections, and there exists extensive court practice concerning the topic of the dispute - then in such cases the exaction of judicial expenses from the loser’s side according to the model of property can be justified. It would be applied to increase the expected expenses of the side more likely to lose and to provide stimuli for reaching a compromise. Otherwise, the model currently existing in Russia appears wholly justified.