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Valery Zorkin. The economy and law - a new context // Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 22.05.2014

“It is impossible not to touch upon recently observed attempts of a significant part of legal community to introduce into Russian law-creation practice the elements of the Anglo-Saxon law of precedent”

“It is impossible not to touch upon recently observed attempts of a significant part of legal community to introduce into Russian law-creation practice the elements of the Anglo-Saxon law of precedent. Which, I shall emphasise, in contrast to the codified continental (first of all, the German) law was never applied neither in Imperial nor in the Soviet of post-Soviet legal history.

I want to point out that  distinctions  between these  systems of law are not solely formal ones. These distinctions are reflected in the specific character of lawyers’ thinking – from the legislator to a law-enforcer and from an advocate to a public prosecutor.  Such distinctions require a prior creation (and organisation of complex systems of using) of precedential evidentiary bases. These distinctions require a profoundly different organisation of the entire legal process, ranging from the drafting of laws to their variegated application. And these distinctions require considerable time for the law-application within new legal system to be recognised as just and legitimate by the popular Russian consciousness.  

Therefore I am convinced that all attempts to implant into the Russian legal system the Anglo-Saxon legal sprouts are unjustified and destructive. This is because nowhere in the world any proofs of the Anglo-Saxon system were found, whereas the “transitional period”, inevitable in case of such implantations, will at least partially disorganise and weaken the Russian system of law-determining and law-application (which is still far from being perfect)”. (Full version)