Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 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: Constitution of the Russian Federation
- Notes
- Index
6 - In search of a just system: the courts and judicial reform
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- 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: Constitution of the Russian Federation
- Notes
- Index
Summary
For more than 73 years we had no real judicial branch of government. The courts were just an extension of Party power. Anyone who came before the court had little chance of a fair trial.
Boris Zolotyukin, Chair, Committee on Juridical Reform, Russian Parliament (1992)With the exception of the relatively brief period from 1864 to 1917, courts have not enjoyed much status or independence in Russia and the Soviet Union. The first courts evolved in Russia in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries largely as a mechanism for enforcing the tsar's policies and for resolving disputes between subjects. The notion that the crown could be held accountable to the law – a fundamental feature of English law since the Magna Carta in 1215 – was never accepted by the monarchy nor by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution of 1917. The central problem confronting the judiciary today is establishing the the fundamental norm of an independent judiciary whose decisions are based solely on law, rather than political expediency, and are binding even on organs of the state.
Organization of the courts
With the collapse of the USSR in late 1991, the judiciary underwent substantial revision. Under the former constitution of the USSR there were all-union courts (e.g. the USSR Supreme Court, the Supreme Arbitrazh Court, and military courts) and union-republic courts and their subordinate courts at the regional, city and district levels.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reforming the Russian Legal System , pp. 129 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996