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Socialist law or Soviet law denotes a general type of
legal system which has been (and continues to be) used in
socialist and formerly socialist states. It is based on the
civil law system, with major modifications and additions from
Marxist-Leninist ideology. There is controversy as to whether socialist law ever constituted a separate legal system or not. If so, prior to the end of the
Cold War, ''socialist law'' would be ranked among the major legal systems of the world.
While civil law systems have traditionally put great pains in defining the notion of
private property, how it may be acquired, transferred, or lost, socialist law systems provide for most property to be owned by the
Government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...
or by
agricultural co-operative
An agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a cooperative in which farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activity.
A broad typology of agricultural cooperatives distinguishes between agricultural service cooperativ ...
s, and having special courts and laws for state enterprises.
Many scholars argue that socialist law was not a separate legal classification.
Although the
command economy
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, p ...
approach of the communist states meant that most types of property could not be owned, the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
always had a civil code, courts that interpreted this civil code, and a civil law approach to legal reasoning (thus, both legal process and legal reasoning were largely analogous to the
French or
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
civil code system). Legal systems in all socialist states preserved formal criteria of the Romano-Germanic civil law; for this reason, law theorists in post-socialist states usually consider the socialist law as a particular case of the Romano-Germanic civil law. Cases of development of
common law
In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipres ...
into socialist law are unknown because of incompatibility of basic principles of these two systems (common law presumes influential rule-making role of courts while courts in socialist states play a dependent role).
An article published in 2016 suggests that socialist law, at least from the perspective of public law and constitutional design, is a useful category. In the NYU ''Journal of International Law and Policy'', William Partlett and Eric Ip argue that socialist law helps to understand the "Russo-Leninist transplants" that currently operate in China's socialist law system. This helps to understand the "distinctive public law institutions and approaches in China that have been ignored by many scholars".
Soviet legal theory
Soviet law displayed many special characteristics that derived from the socialist nature of the Soviet state and reflected
Marxist-Leninist ideology.
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
accepted the Marxist conception of the law and the state as instruments of coercion in the hands of the bourgeoisie and postulated the creation of popular, informal tribunals to administer revolutionary justice. One of the main theoreticians of Soviet socialist legality in this early phase was
Pēteris Stučka
Pēteris Stučka, sometimes spelt Pyotr Ivanovich Stuchka (russian: Пётр Ива́нович Сту́чка, german: Peter Stutschka (in contemporary writings); – 25 January 1932), was a Latvian jurist and communist politician who served a ...
.
Alongside this
utopian
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society ...
trend was one more critical of the concept of "
proletarian
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philoso ...
justice", represented by
Evgeny Pashukanis
Evgeny Bronislavovich Pashukanis (Russian: Евгений Брониславович Пашуканис; 23 February 1891 – 4 September 1937) was a Soviet legal scholar, best known for his work ''The General Theory of Law and Marxism''.
Early li ...
. A dictatorial trend developed that advocated the use of law and legal institutions to suppress all opposition to the regime. This trend reached its zenith under
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
with the ascendancy of
Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский; pl, Andrzej Wyszyński) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat.
He is known as a state prosecutor of Joseph ...
, when the administration of justice was carried out mainly by the security police in
special tribunals.
During the
de-Stalinization of the
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
era, a new trend developed, based on socialist legality, that stressed the need to protect the procedural and statutory rights of citizens, while still calling for obedience to the state. New legal codes, introduced in 1960, were part of the effort to establish legal norms in administering laws. Although socialist legality remained in force after 1960, the dictatorial and utopian trends continued to influence the legal process. Persecution of political and religious dissenters continued, but at the same time there was a tendency to
decriminalize
Decriminalization or decriminalisation is the reclassification in law relating to certain acts or aspects of such to the effect that they are no longer considered a crime, including the removal of criminal penalties in relation to them. This reform ...
lesser offenses by handing them over to people's courts and administrative agencies and dealing with them by education rather than by incarceration. By late 1986, the
Mikhail Gorbachev era was stressing anew the importance of
individual rights
Group rights, also known as collective rights, are rights held by a group '' qua'' a group rather than individually by its members; in contrast, individual rights are rights held by individual people; even if they are group-differentiated, which ...
in relation to the state and criticizing those who violated
procedural law
Procedural law, adjective law, in some jurisdictions referred to as remedial law, or rules of court, comprises the rules by which a court hears and determines what happens in civil, lawsuit, criminal or administrative proceedings. The rules a ...
in implementing Soviet justice. This signaled a resurgence of socialist legality as the dominant trend. Socialist legality itself still lacked features associated with Western jurisprudence.
Characteristic traits
Socialist law is similar to the
civil law but with a greatly increased
public law sector and decreased
private law sector.
* extensive social warrants of the state (the rights to a job, free education, free healthcare, retirement at 60 for men and 55 for women, maternity leave, free disability benefits and sick leave compensation, subsidies to multichildren families, ...) in return for a high degree of social mobilization.
* the judicial process lacks an
adversarial character; public prosecution is considered as "provider of justice."
* partial or total expulsion of the former
ruling classes from the public life at early stages of existence of each socialist state; however, in all socialist states this policy gradually changed into the policy of "one socialist nation without classes"
* diversity of political views directly discouraged.
* the ruling Communist party was eventually subject to prosecution through party committees in first place.
* abolition of
private property, thus near total collectivization and nationalization of the means of production;
* subordination of the judiciary to the Communist Party
* low respect for
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
as knowledge and culture was considered a right for human kind, and not a privilege as in the free market economies.
A specific institution characteristic to Socialist law was the so-called
burlaw court (or, verbally, "court of comrades", Russian товарищеский суд) which decided on minor offences.
See also
;General:
*
Legal systems of the world
The contemporary national legal systems are generally based on one of four basic systems: civil law, common law, statutory law, religious law or combinations of these. However, the legal system of each country is shaped by its unique history and ...
;Cuba:
*
Cuban legal system
*
Cuban law
The substantive and procedural laws of Cuba were later based on the Spanish Civil laws and were influenced by the principles of Marxism-Leninism after that philosophy became the guiding force of government. The most recent Constitution of Cuba ...
;Soviet Union:
*
Law of the Soviet Union
The Law of the Soviet Union was the law as it developed in the Soviet Union (USSR) following the October Revolution of 1917. Modified versions of the Soviet legal system operated in many Communist states following the Second World War—including ...
*
Ministry of Justice of the USSR
*
Procurator General of the USSR
*
Review of Central and East European Law, formerly known as the Review of Socialist Law
Notes
Further reading
*
*
* Partlett, W & E. Ip, Is Socialist Law Really Dead? 48 NYU Journal of International Law and Politics 463 (2016). Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2660098.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Socialist Law
Soviet law
Law, Socialist
Legal codes
Legal systems