Soviet Law In Theory And Practice

Socialist Law has now joined the Common Law and Civil Law as one of the three main families of legal systems. Soviet foreign policy is an outgrowth of the USSR's internal economic and political structure, which is reflected in Soviet Law. Soviet Law is an integral element of the arena in which the competition and struggle between Socialist and Capitalist systems occurs.

Mr. Berman gives a many-sided interpretation of the Soviet legal system in theory and in practice. He presents a threefold explanation of the development of Soviet law, rooted first in the requirements of a socialist planned economy, second in the heritage of the Russian past, and third in the Soviet 'parental' concept of a man as a youth to be educated and disciplined. He compares and contrasts socialist law with capitalist law, the Russian heritage with the Western legal tradition of the past 900 years, the Soviet concept of man with that which is implicit in our own legal system.

A first draft of the contributions included in this volume had been discussed at the "International Conference on Soviet Law & Administration" which took place at Trento from 17 to 19 December 1986.

Marxist Ideology and Soviet Criminal Law (1980) is about differences between theory and practice in the Soviet Union. It looks at the ways in which the theory of Marx has changed and been changed, through the lens of criminal law- the major way in which social controls are exercised by the State.

The Latvian-born legal theorist P.I. Stuchka (1865-1932), generally recognized as one of the principal architects of modern Soviet legal theory and the Soviet legal system itself, was a prodigious author and editor. Twenty essays by Stuchka written between 1917 and 1931 were selected for translation in this volume. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR