The Joint Court in Russia is a provincial law enforcement agency created on the initiative of Empress Catherine II in 1775. His education implied additional protection of the rights of citizens in certain types of cases. The idea of this court was based on the principle of “natural justice”. Read more about this, as well as the significance and reasons for creating a joint court in Russia, in the article.
About the need for fair laws
The joint court was established by Catherine II under the influence of the ideas of progressive French thinkers of that time, which, for example, belonged to S. Montesquieu, D. Didro, Voltaire, J.-J. Russo. At the same time, she kept personal correspondence with the last three.
Montesquieu's famous work On the Spirit of Laws influenced her especially. In it, he wrote, in particular, that the laws created by people should be preceded by fair relations between them.
The main theme of the political and legal theory created by this thinker, and the main value that is upheld in it, is political freedom. And in order to ensure this freedom, it is necessary to create fair laws and organize statehood in an appropriate manner.
About natural law
According to the Russian Empress, who was guided by the ideas of enlightenment, decisions of a conscientious court should basically be based on natural law, and judges, in modern terms, were charged with managing their affairs with the voice of their own hearts, love for people and respect for the individual, and it was necessary with disgust relate to oppression.
In order to better understand the thought of Catherine II, it will be appropriate to recall that natural law means some ideal legal complex, which nature itself as if prescribed, and it is speculatively present in the human mind.
Among the inalienable human rights include: the human right to life, freedom, security, dignity of the individual. It should be noted that theories based on natural law are inherently opposed to the existing law and order of the so-called civil law that characterizes the ideal "natural order".
Such a system was conceived in two versions. The first is a certain a priori logical premise. The second is a natural state that once preceded public and state order, which was created by people arbitrarily in the form of a social contract.
Tasks and regulations
Based on the above theoretical prerequisites, such practical requirements as:
- Monitoring the legality of the detention of the accused.
- The implementation of attempts to reconcile the parties.
- Removing from the general courts an additional burden in the proceedings of cases characterized by crimes of not too significant public danger.
The court staff consisted of six assessors, two people from each of the existing estates - noble, urban, rural. Some of the civil cases were considered in order to reconcile the parties, such as disputes over the division of property between relatives.
As for the criminal cases parsed by this court, they concerned:
- minor citizens;
- insane;
- deaf and dumb;
- witchcraft;
- bestiality;
- theft of church property;
- harboring offenders;
- causing light bodily harm;
- acts committed in a particularly unfavorable combination of circumstances.
Klyuchevsky on the competence of the court
In the "Course of Russian History", published in 1904, O. Klyuchevsky wrote about this court:
- The jurisdiction of the provincial joint court was the consideration of both criminal and civil cases, which were of a special nature.
- Of the criminal, he knew those in which the source of the crime was not conscious criminal will, but misfortune, moral or physical disability, dementia, infancy, fanaticism, superstition, and the like.
- Of the civilian, he was subordinate to those with whom the litigants themselves turned to him. In these cases, the judges should have contributed to their reconciliation.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the decisions of the joint court did not have legal force in property disputes. If the consent of the defendants to the world was not obtained, the claim was transferred to a court of general jurisdiction. The court examined by us was abolished by the Senate in 1866.
Its significance was that, on the one hand, the courts of general jurisdiction were unloaded, and on the other, when making decisions, not only legislative norms, but also “natural justice” were taken into account.
An interesting fact is that the famous playwright A.N. Ostrovsky, who studied law at Moscow University, but did not graduate, served as clerk in the Moscow Conscientious Court for some time. And although he regarded this service as a duty, he performed it very conscientiously.