Introduction: The Institute for the Rule of Law and its Research

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Peter H. Solomon, Jr., is Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Law and Criminology and a Member of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, all at the University of Toronto. Vadim Volkov is the Academic Director of the Institute for the Rule of Law and S.A. Muromtsev Professor of the Sociology of Law, the European University at Saint-Petersburg.

^1. See, for example, “Concept for Comprehensive Organizational and Managerial Reform of the Law Enforcement Agencies in the Russian Federation,” Statutes and Decisions, vol. 48, no. 5 (September–October 2013), pp. 5–91.

^2. The institute's Web (www.enforce.spb.ru) site includes citations to, if not the actual texts of, virtually all the publications of its scholars, including appearances in the media and analytical memos, as well as scholarly works. The institute published a collection of newspaper articles from its Vedomosti column “Extra Jus”: Po tu storonu prava: Zakonodateli, sudy i politsiia v Rossii [Beyond the Law: Legislators, Judges and Police in Russia], ed. Vadim Volkov and Maksim Trudoliubov (Moscow: Alpina, 2014).

^3. See Vadim Volkov, “Legal and Extra-Legal Sentencing Disparities: Evidence from Russia's Criminal Courts,” Journal of Empirical-Legal Studies, forthcoming, preprint available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id = 2629436; Vadim Volkov and Aryna Dzmitryieva, “Recruitment Patterns, Gender, and Professional Subcultures of the Judiciary in Russia,” International Journal of the Legal Profession, vol. 22, no. 2 (2015), pp. 166–92; Ella Paneyakh, “Faking Performance Together: Systems of Performance Evaluation in Russian Enforcement Agencies and Production of Bias and Privilege,” Post-Soviet Affairs, vol. 30, nos. 2–3 (2014), pp. 115–36.

^4. Recent books and edited volumes include: Arina Dmitreva (Aryna Dzmitryieva), Mikhail Pozdniakov, Kirill Titaev, and Vadim Volkov, Rossiiskie sud'i: sotsiologicheskoe issledovanie professii [Russian Judiciary: A Sociological Study of the Profession] (Moscow: Norma, 2015); Obvinenie i opravdanie v postsovetskoi ugolovnoi iustitisii: sbornik statei [Accusation and Acquittal in Post-Soviet Criminal Justice: A Collection of Articles], ed. V.V. Volkov (Moscow: Norma, 2015); Kak sud'i prinimaiut resheniia: empiricheskie issledovaniia prava [How Judges Make Decisions: Empirical Legal Research], ed. V.V. Volkov (Moscow: Statut, 2012); and Pravo i pravoprimenenie v Rossii: mezhdistsiplinarnye issedovaniia [Law and Its Application in Russia: Interdisciplinary Research, ed. V.V. Volkov (Moscow: Statut, 2011).

^5. Before agreeing to waive the right to a trial on the evidence (the essence of special procedure), accused persons must consult an advocate, who in turn must sign the agreement. To facilitate this process some investigative offices hire lawyers for this purpose (known as “advokaty po naznacheniiu” or “appointed advocates”). The Khozhdaeva and Rabovskii interviews included some of these persons. For analysis of plea bargaining in Russia, or what is known officially as “special procedure of court examination” (osobyi poriadok sudebnogo rassmotreniia), see Peter H. Solomon, Jr., “Plea Bargaining Russian Style,” Demokratizatsiya, vol. 20, no. 3 (Summer 2012), pp. 282–99, and K.D. Titaev and M.L. Pozdniakov, “Poriadok osobyi, prigovor obychnyi: praktika primeneniia osobogo poriadka Sudebnogo razbiratel'stva (gl. 40 UPK RF) v rossiiskikh sudakh” [Special Procedure, Usual Punishment: Practice in the Use of Special Procedure of Court Examination], Analiticheskaia zapiska Instituta problem pravoprimeneniia [An Analytical Memorandum of the Institute for the Rule of Law], St. Petersburg, March 2012.