Reforming the Russian Legal System

Reforming the Russian Legal System is a comprehensive analysis of the forces that are shaping legal reform in the former USSR.

Gordon B. Smith (Author)

9780521450522, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 December 1996

326 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.3 cm, 0.576 kg

"Readers seeking an overview of the Russian leagal system will find much of interest in this book. Gordon B. Smith weaves together various literatures to create a succinct and compelling description of law and leagal culture prior to the October Revolution and during the Soviet period." Kathryn Hendley, Historian

Reforming the Russian Legal System is a comprehensive analysis of the forces that are shaping legal reform in the republics of the former USSR. Looking beneath the flow of day-to-day developments, the book examines how traditional indigenous Russian legal values, and the 74-year experience with communism and 'socialist legality' are being combined with Western concepts of justice and due process to forge a new legal consciousness in Russia today. The author provides a broad historical survey of pre-revolutionary and Soviet-era legal developments, which provides a backdrop to the reforms initiated by Gorbachev. Chapters analysing constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, the Procuracy, and the laws governing the transition to a market economy illustrate the recurring themes of the book: the interaction of crosscurrents in Russian legal culture, and variations in the pace of legal reform from republic to republic and region to region.

Preface
1. Pre-revolutionary Russian law
2. The Bolshevik experience
3. The history of legal reform
4. Forging a new constitution
5. Citizens and the state: the debate over the Procuracy
6. In search of a just system: the courts and judicial reform
7. Law and the transition to a market economy
8. Legal reform in the republics
9. Legal reform and the transition to democracy in Russia
Appendix
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Laws of Specific jurisdictions [LN]