Legal history of Russia
The legal history of Russia goes back to the High Middle Ages.
Kievan Rus
In the time of the Kievan Rus , the Russkaja Pravda is the most important legal collection from the 10th and 11th centuries. It has been handed down in three editorial offices. The first contained only 25 articles of Old Slavic common law. The second has grown to 159 articles: As a result of the Christianization of the Rus, there are influences of Germanic and Byzantine law. In addition to the rules on criminal law and criminal procedural law, there were norms on property and contracts.
With the beginning of Mongol rule in 1328, Russia was cut off from the development of the right on the European continent. Russia thus remains unaffected by the reception of Roman law and does not take part in the process of making law scientifically. Apart from the court books from Pskov and Novgorod, hardly any legal documents from this phase have survived.
Old Russian law
A codification of the old Russian law took place in 1649 under the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich . The Sobornoje Uloschenije ( Соборное уложение ) represents the attempt to put economic life back on a firm legal basis after the turmoil of the change of dynasty. It mainly contains procedural law based on Russian customary law. Criminal law is characterized by cruel punishments and the use of torture. In some places, influences of Byzantine law can be identified, while Roman law has only found its way into Lithuanian law very rarely .
Tsarist Empire (18th and 19th centuries)
Two antagonistic currents determine the law of Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries: the law as an instrument of repression in an autocratic system and the ideas of the Enlightenment imported from Western Europe . Article XX of the Military Law (Воинском Уставе) of 1716 is paradigmatic for the autocratic understanding of rule by Peter I.
"Его Величество есть самовластный монарх, который никому на свете о своих делах ответу дать не должен, но силу и власть имеет свои государства и земли, яко христианский государь, по своей воле и благомнению управлять"
"Because his majesty is an only powerful monarch, who is not allowed to give any question and answer to anybody on earth about his activities, but rather have power and authority to rule empire and countries as a Christian potentate at his own will and as he sees fit."
Until 1906, Russia had no constitutional law that went beyond mere organizational law. Administrative law - in 19th century Prussia intended to protect citizens' freedom and property rights - is at the same time an instrument of the autocratic system in Russia. The large number and variety of norms in civil law lead to uncertainty and confusion in the application of the law. Serfs lack protection under criminal law.
There is often an unbridgeable gap between Enlightenment-influenced reforms emanating from the tsars themselves and law in action . Both the legal lessons introduced by Peter I and the attempts at codification by Catherine II fail. The reforms of Alexander II have the greatest long-term effect .
Constitutional monarchy
After the lost Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Russia received its first constitution, more than a hundred years after the Western European states. For the first time in Russian history, these basic state laws of the Russian Empire contained fundamental freedoms (freedom of religion, nulla poena sine lege ) and limited the power of the tsar. It laid down a legislative procedure, but nonetheless gave the tsar extensive right of initiative and veto. Representatives of the people could be elected to the Reich Duma , the second chamber (the Reichsrat ) was composed of representatives appointed by the tsar. Max Weber coined the term pseudo constitutionalism for this system .
For the first time, legal scholars working in Russia such as Leon Petrażycki are being received in Western Europe.
Soviet law
With the October Revolution , almost all of the tsarist law was abolished. The most important decrees for the legal system are the decree on the land and the decree on the court of the RSFSR of November 30, 1918. Under the influence of Marx's idea of the withering away of state and law , the law faculties were closed and the newly created people's courts with lay judges occupied. The notion of revolutionary legalism viewed the law as an instrument of political arbitrariness and led to the show trials of the 1930s. Without prejudice to the ideological basis, so-called socialist legalism later replaced the ideas of the early post-revolutionary years. This is understood as a strictly positivistic orientation towards the written wording of the law. In the 1960s, important codifications in criminal and civil law came into force. In comparative law , the difference between Soviet law and the continental and Anglo-Saxon tradition led to the introduction of a separate, highly isolated socialist legal system .
Post-Soviet Law
The Perestroika also put in jurisprudence numerous reform processes in motion: Gorbachev's idea of a "socialist rule of law" in 1988 led to the discovery of the individual as a legal entity, it not only through well but before was to protect the state. However, these reform efforts were soon overtaken by the centrifugal forces of the secessionist efforts of individual Soviet republics. Soviet law was soon only applicable in the new republics. The enactment of the constitution of December 12, 1993 was the most important turning point in the legal development of the Russian Federation (Российская Федерация, trans. Rossiyskaya Federazija - 'Russian Federation').
The new legal system had to be completely rebuilt within a short period of time. In some cases, they resorted to their own traditions from pre-revolutionary times, but a significant part consisted of legal transfers from other countries and model solutions from the UN and the EU. In addition to these legal imports, there was a large number of measures which, through contradictions and overlaps, led to great legal uncertainty. After an initial phase of consolidation, the turn of the millennium brought renewed reforms; the influence of foreign law receded in favor of a separate Russian path: in state organization law a system called controlled democracy ( управляемая демократия , transkr. uprawljajemaja Demokratie ) prevailed. Controversial legislative projects such as criminal procedure law and the land code came into force. Since Russia has been a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights since 1998 , a large number of proceedings before the ECHR (over 23,000 complaints from Russian citizens were pending in 2009 alone) influenced the legal system.
literature
- Игорь Андреевич Исаев [Igor Andreevich Isaev]: История государства и права России [Istorija gosudarstva i prava Rossii] . 3. Edition. Moscow 2005, ISBN 5-7975-0349-2 .