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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 seventy-four-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. Drawing on extensive research and personal experience in Russia, the author begins with a broad historical survey of pre-revolutionary and Soviet-era legal developments, which provide a backdrop to the reforms initiated by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Chapters analyzing reforms of 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. This book is addressed to students, lawyers, and business people interested in the former USSR, as well as to scholars of Russian politics and law.
List of contents
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.
Summary
This is a comprehensive analysis of the forces that are shaping legal reform in the former USSR. 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.
