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73THEORY OF LAW
STATUTE IN RUSSIAN LAW (A BRIEF HISTORY)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14420/en.2013.5.2
Zabelina Darya Vladimirovna, Head of A-B-Rail LLC Contract Department, (External Doctorate Student of Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration), e-mail: [email protected].
This paper presents one of the most ancient forms of regulatory legal acts of the Russian state - a statute: its origin, stages of development, sphere of regulated jural relations. In the modern Russian legislation the form of legal regulation of jural relations in transport undergoes changes. The statute form of Soviet legislation is transformed in laws. Those changes, in the author's opinion, must be based on deep analysis of history of legal regulation forms. It is for that purpose that the author makes historic-legal analysis of a statute as a national form of law, as a type of a regulatory legal act. statute, regulatory legal act, transport law, transport legislation, transportation rules, codified documents.
The statute is one of the most ancient forms of regulatory legal act in the Russian state. The statutes and charters of Ancient Rus (in the eleventh and twelfth centuries) are still extant today; they constitute monuments of legislation addressed to problems of state administration, court procedures and the imposition of taxes.
The term «statute» has several meanings in the Russian language.
Etymologically (by reason of its sense) the word «statute» is synonymous in the Russian language with «rule» or «strict regulation».1
In juristic terminology a statute is a body of rules regulating the activities of organizations and establishments, their relationship with other organizations and citizens, and their rights and obligations in a particular sphere of state administration or business activity.2
The appearance of statutes was preceded by charters, which were documents setting out the dues of the feudally dependent population of Rus, and, in the case of ecclesiastical charters, were documents setting out the relationship between the
Abstract.
Keywords:
1 ZhalsanovB.Ts. Charter of a municipal unit in the system of regulatory legal acts: Diss... Cand. Jurid. Sci. - M., 2004. - P. 102.
2 Soviet Encyclopaedic Dictionary / ed. by A.M. Prokhorov. - M.: Soviet Encyclopaedia, 1987.
secular and the ecclesiastical authorities in connection with individual cases in a particular principality (a dependent part of the territory of Ancient Rus from the twelfth to the sixteenth century) for a certain time. Charters, being of local and temporary importance, were not widespread, and just a few of them are still preserved.
As distinct from charters, statutes are monuments with a more complex composition. They are based on one or several charters. The appearance of statutes was brought about by the close connection between state and church in the Middle Ages. The mutual relationships between state and church powers are already generalized in them.
Statutes contain fewer indications of the specific place and time of their creation, are notable for their broad content and applied in various conditions. One of the most ancient statutes is considered to be the Russian Pravda - an eleventh century collection of legal norms from Ancient Rus.1
All the statutes and charters of Ancient Rus differ according to their period in feudal state history, their territory of creation, and the step on the feudal ladder occupied by the parties figuring in the statutes.
At the end of the 10th and the beginning of the eleventh centuries, a source of ecclesiastical law having a state origin appeared - the Statute of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich on tithes and churchgoers.. For the first time in Rus, this Statute divided the jurisdiction over cases between the secular and the ecclesiastical courts.
The Statute of Prince Yaroslav the Wise (eleventh century) on the ecclesiastical courts already contains a list of ecclesiastical courts in extended form, with an indication of the consequences of the contravention of the norms of ecclesiastical law. Good many articles of this statute are dedicated to the regulation of the relationships between the genders, in general, and of marital and family relationships, in particular, but they are considered primarily from a criminal law standpoint. For example, there is a rule on the «inadmissibility of dissolution of marriage because of alcohol abuse and a rule on the grounds for divorce.2 Several articles regulating the relationships of church people, including rules on licentiousness, drunkenness etc, can also be found there.3
In the period of the feudal fragmentation of the Old Russian state (the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries) such statutes appear as the Statute of Vsevolod on ecclesiastical courts, and the Church Statute of John the Baptist on the Opokis, known as the manuscript ordinances of the Novgorod Prince Vsevolod Mstislavich (1095-1138). They reflect changes in the state of the church that are connected with the development of the republican system in Novgorod the Great (a territory in the north of Rus). The Statute of Lev Danilovich, the Prince of Galicia,, reflects the mutual relationship between state and church in the south-western and western territories of Rus in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
A special place is occupied by princely statutes and charters that are
1 Russian legislation of 10th-20th centuries. Vol. 1 Legislation of Ancient Rus / exec. ed. V.L. Yanin. - M.: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1984. - P. 136.
2 Ibid. Vol. 1. - P. 163.
3 Ibid. Vol. 1. - P. 163-164.
unconnected with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Feudal duties for the benefit of the princely administration were fixed in the Charter of the Prince of Volyn, Mstislav Danilovich (circa 1289).1 The order of supervision over the improvement of the streets of Novgorod was regulated by the Statute of Prince Yaroslav.
New legal institutions that were previously unknown to Russian law were reflected in the statutes of the fourteenth century. So, for example, there are statutes that regulate the application of the death penalty and corporal punishment. Some of the most well-known documents of that time are the Dvinsk (1397 - 1398) and the Belozyorsk (1488) charters.
In the period from the twelfth century until the middle of the sixteenth century, during the process of the unification of the separate principalities into a Russian state with its centre in Moscow, a number of the most important legal documents were created. A special place was occupied, for example, by charters of the vicegerent. These brought about the legal affiliation of a particular territory (land or principality) with Muscovy, and extended the sovereignty of the Moscow Grand Prince over it. In order to administer these territories, the Moscow Grand Princes appointed special functionaries - vicegerents and volost-holders - who were handed a charter as the main document in which their judicial and administrative powers were defined and regulated with the greatest possible detail. That measure helped the central Moscow powers to control activities in the territories affiliated with the Russian centralized state.
In 1555-1556 a new variety of statute appears. A major monument of Russian law - the Regulations of the Robbers Order - was created. The Robbers order was one of the Russian state’s management bodies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was in charge of cases of brigandage, robberies and murders, and of executioners and jails. The Robbers order was governed by regulations covering criminal judgments.
The second half of the sixteenth century in the history of the Russian state is connected with the beginning of the formation of an all-Russian market and its inclusion in the world trade system. A major legislative monument of the second half of the seventeenth century - the New Trading Statute (1667) - was adopted. The Statute contained legal norms regulating internal and foreign trade, thereby putting this trade under state control. The system of protective tariffs was connected with the policy of attracting and retaining money arriving from abroad. The Statute prevented attempts by foreign trade capital to seize the Russian market. For the first time the regulation of foreign trade was comprehensively reflected in the form of a single law for the whole state. Therefore, in the period from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries the statute underwent in its development a period from a precedent to a form of a source of law of national importance.2
In the process of the development of the law in Russia the statute then comes back again from its national-level function to being a regulation relating to a particular
1 Ibid. Vol. 1. - P. 163-164.
2 Russian legislation of 10th -20th centuries.. Vol. 4. Legislation of the period of the establishment of absolutism / exec. ed. A.G. Malkov. - M.: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1986. - P.116.
problem. As a rule, this kind of regulation sets the rules for the conduct of certain activities; examples are the Statute of the Deanery or Police (1782),1 the Statute of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1836), or the General Statute of Russian Railways (1885).2
In the Soviet period, statutes were exclusively subordinate acts, and include, for example, the Statute of Railway Transport (1922), the Veterinary Statute of the RSFSR (1927),3 the Statute of the Ural Railway Trust (1927),* or the Statute of Vehicular Transport of the RSFSR (1969).5
After the disintegration of the USSR and the formation of the Russian Federation (Russia) in 1991, a steady trend is discernible of a transition from statutes (as legislation dealing with types of activity) to legislative acts. The constituent documents of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are good examples showing that this transition has definitely happened. According to Clause 2 of Article 66 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, «the status of a territory, region, city of federal significance, autonomous area or autonomous district is defined by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the statute of the territory, region, city of federal significance, autonomous area or autonomous district, as adopted by the legislative (representative) body of the corresponding constituent entity of the Russian Federation».
One more modern example of the transformation of statutes into legislative acts is seen in the transport law. Here such complicated structures as a statute in the form of a federal law exist, and are represented by the Federal law No 18-FZ of January 10, 2003, «Statute about railway transport of the Russian Federation».
However at the present time in Russian legislation acts in the form of a statute are mainly preserved in the form of by-laws - the statute of an entity.
Summarizing the foregoing, it can be seen that, although the history of the statute in Russian law extends back over many centuries, and the form of the regulatory legal acts under consideration is constantly developing and changing, the statute has managed to preserve its main feature - a body of rules regulating the organization and operating procedures in some specific relationship.
References
1. ZhalsanovB.Ts. Charter of a municipal unit in the system of regulatory legal acts: Diss... Cand. Jurid. Sci. - M., 2004.
2. Complete collection of laws of the Russian empire. 2nd collection. Vol. XI. 1st division. - SPb., 1837. - Art. 8739-9493.
3. Russian legislation of 10th-20th centuries. Vol. 1. Legislation of Ancient Rus
1 Russian legislation of 10th -20th centuries. Vol. 5. Legislation of the period of the golden age of absolutism / exec. ed. E.I. Indova. - M.: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1987. - P.146.
2 Complete collection of laws of the Russian empire. 2nd collection. Vol. XI. 1st division. - SPb., 1837.
- Art. 8739-9493.
3 Collection of Directions and Orders of the RSFSR. - M., 1927. - Art. 558.
4 Collection of Laws and Orders of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the USSR. - M., 1927.
- Art. 197.
5 LRS Garant. URL: http://www.garant.ru/.
/ exec. ed. V.L. Yanin. - M.: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1984.
4. Russian legislation of 10th -20th centuries. Vol. 4. Legislation of the period of the establishment of absolutism / exec. ed. A.G. Malkov. - M.: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1986.
5. Russian legislation of 10th -20th centuries. Vol. 5. Legislation of the period of the golden age of absolutism / exec. ed. E.I. Indova. - M.: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1987.
6. Collection of Laws and Orders of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the USSR. - M., 1927. - Art. 197.
7. Collection of Directions and Orders of the RSFSR. - M., 1927. - Art. 558.
8. Soviet Encyclopaedic Dictionary / ed. by A.M. Prokhorov. - M.: Soviet Encyclopaedia, 1987.
9. LRS Garant. URL: http://www.garant.ru/.
