Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World

This book looks at the Soviet style of law that was adopted slowly in the West during the twentieth century.

John Quigley (Author)

9780521881746, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 September 2007

276 pages
23.3 x 15.9 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

The government of Soviet Russia wrote new laws for Russia that were as revolutionary as its political philosophy. These new laws challenged social relations as they had developed in Europe over centuries. These laws generated intense interest in the West. To some, they were the harbinger of what should be done in the West, hence a source for emulation. To others, they represented a threat to the existing order. Western governments, like that of the Tsar, might be at risk if they held to the old ways. Throughout the twentieth century Western governments remade their legal systems, incorporating an astonishing number of laws that mirrored the new Soviet laws. Western law became radically transformed over the course of the twentieth century, largely in the direction of change that had been charted by the government of Soviet Russia.

Part I. The Soviet Challenge: 1. The industrial revolution and the law
2. Economic needs as legal rights
3. Equality in the family
4. Children and the law
5. Crime without punishment
6. A call to 'struggling people'
7. The withering away of law
Part II. Accommodation in the West: 8. Panic in the palace
9. Enter the working class
10. Social welfare rights
11. The state and the economy
12. Equality comes to the family
13. Child-bearing and rights of children
14. Racial equality
15. Crime and punishment
Part III. The Bourgeois International Order: 16. Equality of nations
17. The end of colonies
18. The criminality of war
19. Protecting sovereignty
20. Military intervention
Part IV. Law beyond the Cold War: 21. Triumph of capitalist law?
22. The moorings of Western law
23. The impact of change.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Comparative law [LAM]