Fundamentals of Russian legal culture. Legal nihilism

general courses
optional courses

Basic knowledge in the field of common history and the history of Russia.

Classroom

Lectures present the socio-legal approach to the Russian legal culture, focusing not on history, but on legal tradition and meaning of cultural identity for modern attitudes and behaviors towards law. Revealing of some sources of dysfunctions of Polish legal culture is crucial.

The intention of lectures is to extend the knowledge about social essence of law, as a cultural phenomenon and presentation of Russian the specificity of Russian legal culture and legal tradition. This task will be carried out by presenting the origins and specific qualities of Russian legal traditions in the historical and intellectual contexts.

Main aims of the lectures are:

• providing core knowledge of the cultural identity of law;

• showing the relationship between legal traditions and legal content;

• educating students on basic information on the development of Russian law;

• presenting mutual dependencies between legal traditions and social and political systems;

• showing the main directions of development of Russian legal thought;

• presenting reasons for founding of sociology of law in Russia;

• considering the importance of its Marxist concepts for the Soviet legal thought;

• analyzing the factors blocking mimetic reforms of law;

• clarifying cultural sources leading to disrespect for the law

Selected bibliography:

1. [zbior.], Semiotyka dziejów Rosji, Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, Łodź, 1993;

2. Nikolai A.Berdiajev, Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma, Nauka, Moskva, 1990;

3. James H.Billington, Ikona i topór. Historia kultury rosyjskiej, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2008

4. Zbigniew Cywiński, Krytyka i ignorancja. Uwagi o krytykowaniu prawa i atakowaniu prawników, inspirowane listem Lwa Tołstoja O Prawie (wraz z tłumaczeniem Listu), w: Jan Majchrowski (red.naukowa), Państwo-prawo-polityka w przestrzeni konstytucyjnej. Warszawa, Liber 2007, s.101-118;

5. Zbigniew Cywiński, Między samoderžaviem a nihilizmem - rosyjskie dyskusje o państwie prawnym u zarania XX wieku, Kwartalnik prawa publicznego, Rok III, Nr 2/2003. s. 58 - 94;

6. Zbigniew Cywiński, Sprawiedliwość przeciwko prawu. Rosyjskie spory o prawo i sprawiedliwość, w: Jerzy Kwaśniewski [red. naukowy], Normatywność współczesnej Polski, Instytut Profilaktyki Społecznej i Resocjalizacji Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2005, s. 207 - 255;

7. Zbigniew Cywiński, U źródeł terroru: nihilizm prawny a wykluczenie prawne. Przypadek rosyjski, w: Idee naukowe Adama Podgóreckiego. Pod red. Jerzego Kwaśniewskiego i Jana Winczorka, PTS, IPSiR UW, Warszawa 2009, s. 261 – 284.

8. Hans Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law, F. A. Praeger,

Inc, London, 1955;

9. Richard Pipes, Rosja carów, Wydawnictwo MAGNUM, Warszawa 2006;

10. Andris A. Plotnieks, Stanovlenie i razvitie marksistsko - leninskoi

obscei teorii prava v SSSR, 1917 - 1936 gg., Zinatne, Riga, 1978;

11. Andrzej Walicki, Filozofia prawa rosyjskiego liberalizmu, Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Warszawa1995;

12. Andrzej Walicki, Zarys myśli rosyjskiej od oświecenia do renesansu religijno filozoficznego, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagielońskiego, Kraków, 2005.

13. Alexander Vucinich, Social Thought in Tsarist Russia. The Quest for a General Science of Society, 1861 - 1917, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1976;

14. Vadim D.Zorkin, Pozitivistskaja teorija prava v Rossii, Izdatelstvo MGU, Moskva, 1978.

After learning, student:

• sees the law as a complex phenomenon which is conditioned socially and culturally;

• describes the basic elements of legal culture;

• characterizes legal tradition as element and dimension of culture;

• describes distinctness of Russian legal culture from the Western legal culture;

• indicates the basic factors which have affected on the difference of Russian legal tradition;

• describes the effects of cultural conflict resulting from the diversity of legal traditions;

• describes basic stages in the evolution of Russian legal tradition;

• characterizes the legal threads in the 19th century Russian social discourse;

• assesses the impact of the law on social and political life;

• distinguish general rights from individual privileges and can indicate examples;

• indicates the source of socio-legal conceptions in Russian legal thought;

• distinguishes Marxist an traditionally Russian influences in Soviet legal theories;

• describes a mechanism for the development of Soviet law in the first two decades of Soviet state;

• criticizes simplistic interpretations of Russian life and history.

Control of the presence and semestr paper.

None