scholarly journals The Issue of Judicial Law Making in Files of the Constitutional Meeting

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 69-72
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Manzhosov ◽  

Even outside of the common law countries, it is rarely denied that the doctrine of precedent which requires to treat like cases alike ensures the uniformity of judicial practice and thus promotes legal certainty. The main objections to it in Russian jurisprudence are usually associated with the principles of separation of powers and the independence of judges. The tension between these principles, on the one hand, and the principle of legal certainty, on the other, is recognized not only by opponents, but also by some adherents of this doctrine. As a result, all argumentation in this dispute inevitably takes the form of unprovable value judgments. The frame of the discussion around the doctrine of precedent could be significantly changed, in particular, by the results of the historical interpretation of the Constitution of the Russian Federation aimed at founding out the actual intention of its authors.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 27-32
Author(s):  
V. K. Andreev ◽  

The article discusses the forms of clarification on matters of judicial practice by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the Presidium of the Supreme Court, as well as in the Review of judicial practice on some issues of the application of legislation on business companies dated December 25, 2019. Clarifications of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on issues of judicial practice are characterized as the positions of the courts identified in the course of studying and summarizing the judicial practice of the corresponding category of cases, which are acts of individual regulation of public relations. Focusing on Art. 6 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and Section 6, Art. 12 of the APC RF shows the validity of dividing wrong into two types of wrong: the «moderate» type of «judicial law-making and the position of the court» and the «radical» type of «judicial law-making», when the court develops the rule of law, which contradicts the constitutional principle of separation of powers. When resolving corporate disputes, it is necessary to investigate whether the charter of a non-public company does not contain the rights and obligations of its participants, which they themselves created by making a unanimous decision and including them in the charter of the company (paragraph 3 of Art. 66.3 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, paragraph 3 of Art. 14 of the Law about LLC).


2020 ◽  
pp. 98-106
Author(s):  
V. V. Levin

The article is devoted to the analysis of judicial practice as the basis of law-making activity in the Russian Federation, on the basis of which it is possible to create a precedent. Case law in Russia is Advisory in nature and is not mandatory for law enforcement practice. Courts use the signs of case law in their decisions in the reasoned part. Signs of case law is a ruling of the constitutional court of the Russian Federation and regulations of the armed forces of the Russian Federation.


Author(s):  
Eva Steiner

This chapter examines the law of contract in France and discusses the milestone reform of French contract law. While this new legislation introduces a fresh equilibrium between the contracting parties and enhances accessibility and legal certainty in contract, it does not radically change the state of the law in this area. In addition, it does not strongly impact the traditional philosophical foundations of the law of contract. The reform, in short, looks more like a tidying up operation rather than a far-reaching transformation of the law. Therefore, the chapter argues that it is questionable whether the new law, which was also intended to increase France's attractiveness against the background of a world market dominated by the Common Law, will keep its promise.


2013 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Arenson

Despite the hackneyed expression that ‘judges should interpret the law and not make it’, the fact remains that there is some scope within the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to develop the common law incrementally. To this extent, the courts can effectively legislate, but only to this limited extent if they are to respect the separation of powers doctrine. On occasion, however, the courts have usurped the power entrusted to Parliament, and particularly so in instances where a strict application of the existing law would lead to results that offend their personal notions of what is fair and just. When this occurs, the natural consequence is that lawyers, academics and the public in general lose respect for both the judges involved as well as the adversarial system of criminal justice. In order to illustrate this point, attention will focus on the case of Thabo Meli v United Kingdom in which the Privy Council, mistakenly believing that it could not reach its desired outcome through a strict application of the common law rule of temporal coincidence, emasculated the rule beyond recognition in order to convict the accused. Moreover, the discussion to follow will demonstrate that not only was the court wrong in its belief that the case involved the doctrine of temporal coincidence, but the same result would have been achieved had the Council correctly identified the issue as one of legal causation and correctly applied the principles relating thereto.


Author(s):  
John Baker

This chapter examines the history of case-law, legislation, and equity, with particular reference to legal change. The common law was evidenced by judicial precedent, but single decisions were not binding until the nineteenth century. It was also rooted in professional understanding, the ‘common learning’ acquired in the inns of court. It was based on ‘reason’, operating within a rigid procedural framework. Legal change could be effected by fictions, equity, and legislation, but (except during the Interregnum) there was little systematic reform before the nineteenth century. Legislation was external to the common law, but it had to be interpreted by common-law judges and so there was a symbiotic relationship between statute-law and case-law. Codification has sometimes been proposed, but with limited effect.


Author(s):  
Mike McConville ◽  
Luke Marsh

The concluding Chapter scrutinises the validity and relevance of the book’s hitherto unseen archival files, from which its account stems. In pulling together its main themes concerning the role of civil servants, the Executive and the Judiciary in administering criminal justice, it retraces the trajectory of suspects’ rights in the late nineteenth century, from their seemingly ‘bedrock’ foundation within the common law to their rough distillation (at home and abroad) through various iterations of Judges’ ‘Rules’, themselves of dubious pedigree. In documenting this journey, this Chapter underscores how Senior Judges, confronted by Executive power impinging upon the future direction of system protections, enfeebled themselves, allowing ‘police interests’ to prevail. With Parliament kept in the dark as to the ongoing subterfuge; and the integrity of the Home Office, as an institution, long dissolved, ‘Executive interests’ took the reins of a system within which much mileage for ‘culture change’ lay ahead. This Chapter helps chart their final destination; ultimately, one where new Rules (the CrimPR) replace those exposed as failures, leading to governmental success of a distinct kind: traditional understandings of ‘rights’ belonging to suspects and defendants subverted into ‘obligations’ owing to the Court and an adversarial process underpinning determinations of guilt long-disbanded in the quest for so-called ‘efficiency’. In explaining the implications of the events discussed in this book for the issue of ‘Judicial Independence’ and the ‘Separation of Powers’, this Chapter offers a theoretical framework that illuminates the role and practices of the Senior Judiciary in criminal justice policy today.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kearns

This essay argues that the 1675 conviction of John Taylor by the Court of King's Bench for slandering God reveals Chief Justice Matthew Hale implementing a model of conjoint law-making between courts, Parliament, and crown that gave pre-eminent power to the common lawyers, and none to the Church of England. In doing so, it counters the prevailing literature on Restoration English law, which has treated the law as hierarchical, with the common lawyers subordinate to the sovereign. Rather than following statute or ecclesiastical law, which emphasised the spiritual nature of crimes like Taylor's, Hale located Taylor's offence in the exclusively temporal common law jurisdiction of defamation, which existed largely outside of monarchical purview. Hale's judgment reflected his rhetoric of judicial office outside the courtroom, where he argued the judiciary worked alongside King and Parliament in making law, but were not subservient to these institutions, for common lawyers relied on sources of law beyond sovereign-made statute. The language of sovereignty as hierarchical was thus a factional attack on an independent common law, an attempt to subordinate the common lawyers to the crown that was resisted by the lawyers like Hale in his rhetoric and exercise of office, and should not ground accounts of the Restoration regime.


1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-48
Author(s):  
Louise Tee

ADVERSE possession and registered land are unlikely bedfellows–the one originating in the common law idea that a freehold estate results from possession and the other premised upon registration validating title. Indeed, when registration of title was introduced into England and Wales in the nineteenth century, acquisition of title to registered land by adverse possession was prohibited–see section 21 of the Land Transfer Act 1875. However, a more pragmatic approach then ensued, and the Land Registration Act 1925, s. 75, expansively provided that the Limitation Acts should apply to registered land in the same manner and to the same extent as those Acts applied to unregistered land. But technically, of course, this was impossible, and the section detailed a special trust mechanism for registered land alone. Section 75 thus clearly illustrates the inherent difficulties in trying to retain the substantive law of unregistered land within a registered context. Tensions are inevitable, because of the very different conceptual bases of the two systems. In Central London Commercial Estates Ltd. v. Kato Kagaku Ltd., The Times, 27 July 1998, Sedley J. was directly faced with such tension, as he strove to determine the effect of section 75.


1953 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. N. Gooderson

“There is no such thing known to our procedure as putting half a prisoner's character in issue and leaving out the other half.” This observation fell from Humphreys J. in delivering the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in R. v. Winfield (1939). The purpose of this article is to suggest that at common law this statement is not borne out by principle or by authority. The effect on the common law where the prisoner elects to go into the witness-box in exercise of the statutory opportunity created by the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, will also be considered. The type of situation that arises is illustrated by Winfield's Case, where the facts, in brief, were that on a charge of indecent assault, W. put in issue his good character for sexual morality, and the prosecution in cross-examination proved his previous convictions for offences involving dishonesty. The court held that such cross-examination was proper. The question is whether the evidence of the good or bad character of the prisoner must be confined to the trait or traits relevant to the type of crime charged. It will be submitted that the evidence must be so confined. On an indictment for murder, evidence of the good or bad character of the prisoner for honesty will be inadmissible. Not only the crime charged but also the circumstances in which it is alleged to have been committed must be considered. If the murder is committed with a hammer, character for peace and quiet on the one hand and for violence on the other will be admissible, but not if it is a case of slow poisoning.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Вячеслав Воронин ◽  
Vyacheslav Voronin

Part 3 of article 60 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation refers to the common criteria of individualization of punishment the nature and degree of public danger of committed crime in each criminal case. The purpose of this article is to analyze the legal practice of this provision, as well as the construction of clarification on the issue of taking into consideration the public danger, which will be useful for the judiciary. For this purpose the author supposes to solve following problems: analysis of dogmatic ideas about the nature and degree of public danger; search for factors that courts consider in determining public danger in judicial practice; analysis of the survey data of judges from different regions of the country. As a result the author concludes that the nature of public danger depends on the object of the offense and cannot influence on individualization of punishment, because it was considered by the legislator when constructing the corresponding article of the Special Part and therefore should be excluded from Part 3 of art. 60 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Degree of public danger when individualizing is determined subject to the objective and subjective elements of a crime. The author proposed to make recommendations on considering into account degree of public danger in the judgment 22.12.2015 No. 58 adopted by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation “On practice of criminal sentencing by courts of the Russian Federation”.


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