Criminological Policy of the Russian Federation: the Concept of Judicial Reform and Justice of the Peace

The article presents a legal approach to the problem of the influence of the judicial system segment of Russian criminological policy on the effectiveness of the general prevention of deviant behavior. Within this framework, the authors compare the assumptions of the program documents that described the criminological parameters of justice of the peace during its introduction in the contemporary judicial system, and the results achieved by this introduction. By analyzing the Decree of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR «On the Concept of Judicial Reform in the RSFSR», the authors demonstrate that this document was aimed at legitimizing confederative relationships in the Russian Federation with the design of the judicial system of «cooperative federalism» type. The justice of the peace, whose status and jurisdiction are only schematically outlined in the Concept of Judicial Reform, was to play a decorative role in the political and ideological support of the achievement of a far more ambitious goal. The transformation of Russia into a state of «cooperative federalism» with extreme asymmetry of its subjects would have meant the removal of the opportunity for the justices of the peace to perform the criminological function of courts. The introduction of justices of the peace simultaneously with the adoption of their own codes of material and procedural law in the republics of the RSFSR predetermined the creation of legal systems independent of the federal center in each Russian subject and the blocking of the criminological function of the courts. At the same time, a retrospect reference to the legal tradition of the Russian Empire formed an erroneous understanding of Russian justice of the peace as a unified (since 1864) judicial system, and lead to the development of abstract projects that hindered the implementation of the crime prevention potential of justice of the peace. The result of the criminological policy of the Russian Federation in 1991–1996 was the structuring of the court system of the Russian Federation which was different from the model presented in the Concept of Judicial Reform. The conducted research showed that justice of the peace in Russia duly influences crime prevention.

LEGAL MODERNIZATION OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM OF THE SAMARA PROVINCE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: JUSTICE OF THE PEACE

The article considers peculiarities of the emergence and development of justices of the Samara province in the second half of the XIX century, analyzes the reasons for their liquidation in 1889.

“INCOMPLETE” COURT PROCEDURES IN MODERN CIVIL PROCEDURE

The development of judicial procedures is an indicator of increasing complexity of civil procedure, a clear manifestation of the general pattern – unification and differentiation of civil procedural form. And one of the main tasks of the legislator is to make sure that the objective complexity of the legal space does not lead to complication of the access to judicial protection for interested persons. This thesis, put forward by the author, acts as one of the key ideas of this study and is disclosed in the article in terms of “incomplete” judicial procedures. The “incomplete” judicial procedures, according to the author’s conception, include simplified proceedings, absentee proceeding, court-ordered proceedings and proceedings on insignificant claims. The latter should be understood as proceedings before a justice of the peace in action cases (see clauses 2–5 part 1 of Article 23 of the Civil Procedure Code of the RF). In conclusion it is concluded that the procedural nature of the Russian process, laid down in the codes of the early 20th century, now acquires conceptual importance, which requires a different methodology to solve current legislative problems. The procedures we have considered is a “litmus test” of the methods of justice, which allows us to comprehend the general vector of the further path of civilizational process reform.

Pamela's Complaint: Injury, Rights, and the Politics of Story

Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded uses a literary form of legal complaint to argue that Pamela has been injured by B's violent advances. Richardson suggests that these advances should be treated as legal wrongs and that Pamela deserves to be righted. However, her social status and her servitude to her local justice of the peace make recourse impossible. Along with the rest of the characters, B rejects her complaint, insisting instead that it is his reputation that has been injured by Pamela's pleas and that he, not Pamela, stands in need of remedy. Their contest over harm and remedy is an allegory of common law justice for victims of sexual violence: it tends to treat their complaints as malevolent prosecutions, directing legal scrutiny toward the victims of sexual violence rather than toward its perpetrators. Richardson's political critique of the legal system engenders an outsider theory of rights. Institutional accounts of rights suggest that rights are personal attributes of the individual or the unique inheritance of the English subject, but Pamela argues that they arise out of political conflicts over what counts as harm and what harm should be remedied. Historians, political theorists, and literary critics tend to agree that the novel reflects and consolidates these institutional rubrics, but this reading shows that outsider demands for legal remedy pose a unique threat to institutional political power.

Everyday Justice in Pre-Confederation Canada: The Ledger of Thomas Burrowes, JP of Kingston Mills

This essay combines close bibliographical analysis of the 1856–66 ledger of Thomas Burrowes, Justice of the Peace for Kingston Mills in what is now Ontario, with a wide-ranging discussion of what the document can reveal about its owner and about the practice of everyday justice in a small mill town in the years leading up to Canadian Confederation. It considers the effect of reading about law in manuscript versus printed form. It follows the intriguing evidence contained within the ledger to consider its possible uses by subsequent owners after Burrowes’s death, tracing the ledger in its circular journey from Kingston Mills to the Queen’s University Archives in Kingston via Detroit and Indiana.

A Justice of the Peace Court as a Regulator of Criminal Procedure Relationships Containing Right Abuse Attributes

The article deals with the problem of abuse of subjective right in criminal proceedings at the stage of preliminary investigation. Based on a comparative analysis and study of foreign scientific literature, conclusions are drawn about the state of the issue under study in Russian criminal proceedings. Attention is focused on the need to work out procedural response measures by providing the magistrates’ courts and courts in general with additional, normative legal opportunities in order to effectively exercise judicial control at the pre-trial stage of the investigation in cases of abuse of law on the part of participants in the process.

“Much Might Be Said on Both Sides”

Sir Roger de Coverley, representative of the landed gentry in The Spectator, is typically read as a lovable, old-fashioned eccentric and comic object. Closer attention to the series of essays set in and around Sir Roger’s Worcestershire estate — especially numbers 117, 122, and 130 — reveals that the baronet’s work as a justice of the peace stimulates Mr. Spectator’s moral development. Sir Roger’s intimate relationships with his inferiors and his quasi-familial approach to problem-solving challenge Mr. Spectator’s worldview, allowing Addison and Steele to express their ideas through an interplay of voices. Mr. Spectator’s evolving first-person perspective, animated by the loose, ad hoc structures of the justice’s work, where determining the beginning and ending of a legal action is often difficult, clarifies Sir Roger’s exemplary functions in the text. This essay argues that The Spectator functions as a provocative inquiry into ideology rather than a vehicle for Whiggish politics through a narrative point of view that responds to the characters and settings it encounters, most significantly the figure of the country magistrate. The Spectator’s adoption of the magistrate’s structures of judgment elucidates the role of the rural justice of the peace in eighteenth-century English society and law.

The Non-Professional Judge as a Component of Civic Culture in Poland

The objective of the paper is to present the role of the non-professional judge in Poland as an important manifestation of civic culture based on citizens’ activity in the sphere of justice among other things. The paper also highlights the importance of an appropriate selection of citizens who are to adjudicate and possibly place restrictions on access to judicial functions using the example of Polish law. The last part addresses the problem of the gradual reduction of the participation of lay judges in the Polish justice system and the controversial attempts to halt this trend, such as the introduction of lay judges to the Supreme Court and the start of discussions on the introduction of the justice of the peace to common courts.