The role of law and justice in today’s Russia. The results of the survey by the Center of Political Technologies were published

The December issue of the “Zakon” magazine (No. 12, 2012) contains the final analytical report on the qualitative and sociological research of the project activity of government agencies. A research group of the Center of Political Technologies Foundation has held expert’s interviews with the leading lawyers of Russia since February till May of 2012 in order to evaluate the following initiatives of the state authorities:

1. Monitoring of the application of law, started in the second half of 2011;
2. The Law on free legal assistance;
3. Pragmatization of the criminal legislation (amendments to the Penal Code of the Russian Federation replacing prison time with fines for economic crimes etc.);
4. Reform of the penitentiary system;
5. A set of amendments to the Civil Code of Russia;
6. Reform of the Bar (“Justice” program project);
7. Creation of the information portal “Regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation”;
8. Initiative to implement the procedure of creation of non-commercial organizations by notification.

The questions on the advantages and disadvantages of the initiatives, on the measures that should be taken for their efficient application etc. were answered by: Alexander Makovsky, Deputy chairman of the Council of the Research Center of Private Law; Professor Igor Matskevich, First Deputy Rector – Deputy rector for scientific work of the Oleg Kutafin Moscow State Academy of Law; Tamara Moschakova, Head of the Chair of judicial power and organization of justice of the faculty of Law of the NRU HSE; Evgeny Semenyako, President of the Federal Chamber of Advocates of Russia; Yury Pilipenko, Managing Partner of the Law Firm "YUST"; Henry Reznik, President of the Chamber of Advocates of the city Moscow; Yuly Tay, managing partner of Bartolius Advocates’ Bureau; Olga Pleshanova, Editor-in-Chief of the Zakon.Ru portal; Alexander Soloviov, Director of the Legal Science Library of Spark Publishing House; and other prominent lawyers.

The results of the survey show that the project of monitoring the application of the law is the most favored by the experts as, in the opinion of the most specialists, it enables to improve the quality of the law-making; to find out how the legal provisions transform under the influence of the Russian institutional environment; to what extent a legal provision is influenced by the existing formal and informal practices etc. However, the methods of the monitoring and its procedure were not shown to the experts, which most of them, when questioned, indicated as a drawback. The evaluations of the set of amendments to the CCRF and the CPCRF have virtually split the respondents into those who fully support the suggested measures and those who strongly oppose them. The reform of the penitentiary system as well as the electronic portal of regulatory and legal acts of Russia (the Federal Register) received mixed marks. The experts lent their particular attention to the amendments to the Civil Code.

The exact conclusions, which the researchers made after having summarized and studied the opinions of the lawyers, are available in the hardcopy version of the Zakon magazine (No. 12, 2012).