Results of the Discussion of the Draft Code of Civil Procedure of the RSFSR

In publishing the major provisions of the draft Code of Civil Procedure of the RSFSR, the editors of Sovetskaia iustitsiia wished to organize a broad exchange of opinions among readers on the most fundamental and controversial problems of Soviet civil procedure. Articles appearing in the press, the speeches at the All-Union Conference to Discuss the Drafts of the RSFSR Civil and Civil Procedure Codes, and the numerous letters received by the editors of this journal and by the Ministry of Justice of the RSFSR bear witness to the broad nature of the discussion. Along with the generally positive evaluation of the draft, the participants in the discussion voiced a number of critical observations and proposals aimed at improving it. Although we cannot deal with all the questions touched upon in the course of the discussion, we shall note the most fundamental of them in the sequence in which their content is dealt with in the draft code.     

Justice and Public Opinion

One of the key questions of justice has become the subject of a discussion that has developed in Izvestia. It can be said that its kernel is the matter of the independence of the judiciary. It is this question that underlies the article by Korenevskii and Sukhodolets, "A Cause of Errors" [Otchego byvaiut oshibki] (Izvestia, No. 61), against which Galkin wrote in his article "The Court and Public Passions" [Sud i obshchestvennye] (Izvestia, No. 91).     

The Future of the West

From the editors of Kommunist: The editors publish Academician T. Zaslavskaia's article with the request that the readers participate in the discussion of little-investigated, debatable problems examined by the author and that they send in their articles, letters, and ideas, which we will publish in a new section of the journal: "Debates and Discussions."     

It Is Important to Understand Our Strengths and Weaknesses

[From the editors of Zhurnalist:] The magical metamorphoses of our journalism could happen only in fairy tales. First, it transformed itself from a handmaiden of the Party into a "fourth estate," literally overnight, then reduced itself to a conveyer belt. Clearly there has been much change in us. So what are these changes, what caused them, and what might their consequences be for us and for society?     

The Standing Committees: Techniques of Monitoring

Note from the editors of Sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia: Continuing the study of the functioning of Soviets, personnel of the USSR Academy of Sciences' Institute of State and Law looked into the operations of local organs of power in the Latvian SSR. Jointly with practical workers in the field, they prepared a number of scholarly recommendations, including proposals to improve the techniques of monitoring [kontrol'] by the standing committees of district and city Soviets.     

We Continue the Discussion "the Neighbor who Shares your Apartment"

Note by editors of Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost': In no. 1 of our journal for this year we published an article by Professor A. Ushakov, "The Neighbor Who Shares Your Apartment," dealing with the imperfections of the prevailing legislation governing exchange of dwelling space. The editors circulated this article to people engaged in application of this legislation in practice and to scholars dealing with this problem and sought their opinions.     

Targeting the terrorists: A legal proposal for assassinating terrorists as a preemptive strike

Recently, Sam Nunn, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated to a gathering of weapons scientists and military planners at Los Alamos National Laboratory that, although the Cold War is over, “this is a world of regional wars, of spreading ethnic, religious and tribal warfare” in which more countries are acquiring the capability to unleash mass death. In January, 1994, then‐Defense Secretary Les Aspin wrote in his annual report to the President and Congress that “[t]he danger that [weapons of mass destruction] might be used against U.S. forces in some conflict is not, unfortunately, theoretical.” In July, 1994, during a visit to Moscow, FBI Director Louis Freeh commented that the efforts of organized crime to steal or buy weapons‐grade nuclear material is “the greatest long‐term threat to the security of the United States.” Later that month, “credible threats” were received by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources of an impending bombing of Israeli targets throughout the United States. While targeting Israeli interests is not uncommon, the fact that such targets were in the U.S. is somewhat alarming.

These statements and other episodes emphasize the ever‐increasing threat that confronts the United States. Terrorists, by nature, are continuously modifying their tactics to thwart defensive/protective measures placed before them by many nations. Therefore, it is contingent upon these nations to develop new strategies and remain one step ahead of the potential nuclear attackers. One such strategy is assassinating the terrorist before he strikes. While many commentators and politicians summarily dismiss this idea, it remains a viable, yet unexplored, option. This article details the historical and current perspectives on assassination as well as its legal significance and justification. While this author is not advocating a national policy of assassination, this argument is submitted strictly as an academic exercise for consideration and debate.     

A High Level of Interfacing: Society,Man, and Nature in the Age of Microelectronics,Information Science,and Biotechnology

Note from the editors of Voprosy filosofii: On 14-15 November 1984 the Scientific Council on the Philosophical and Social Problems of Science and Technology, under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, jointly with the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, will hold an All-Union Conference, "Social and Methodological Problems of Scientific and Technical Progress" (Chairman of the Organization Committee: Academician P. N. Fedoseev, Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences).     

The RedTube copyright infringement affair in Germany: shame on who?

Recently, tens of thousands of German Internet users were confronted with copyright infringement claims for allegedly watching porn clips on the streaming platform RedTube.com. The alleged copyright infringers received ‘Abmahnung’ cease and desist letters that gave them an opportunity to settle copyright infringements out of court by paying rights-holders €250 in compensation. While in cases relating to peer-to-peer file-sharing, the IP address of a peer can easily be identified,¹1. In order to identify the subscriber of a certain IP address at a given time, the rights-holders will file a disclosure request with a court. For details see below, Section 2.3.View all notes the RedTube case raises the question how consumers of a stream could be identified. In addition, it raises the question of whether the consumption of a stream is illegal under German law. Assuming that this is not the case, this analysis of the RedTube case highlights that the system of Abmahnungen is prone to abuse in an Internet context. Several weaknesses of the current system are identified, which show that disclosure requests are not thoroughly assessed by courts and that lawyers are far too willing to send out cease and desist letters although an infringement is not obvious. This environment allowed the emergence of anti-piracy business models that succeed in turning infringements into profit and that do not hesitate to make unfounded claims.     

Differential social organization, collective action, and crime

This article elaborates and extends Sutherland’s [Principles of criminology (4th ed.), Lippincott, Philadelphia, Sutherland (1947)] concept of differential social organization, the sociological counterpart to his social psychological theory of differential association. Differential social organization contains a static structural component, which explains crime rates across groups, as well as a dynamic collective action component, which explains changes in crime rates over time. I argue that by drawing on George Herbert Mead’s [Mind, self, and society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Mead (1934)] theories of symbolic interaction and social control, we can conceptualize organization in favor of, and against, crime as collective behavior. We can then integrate theoretical mechanisms of models of collective behavior, including social network ties, collective action frames, and threshold models of collective action. I illustrate the integrated theory using examples of social movements against crime, neighborhood collective efficacy, and the code of the street. A portion of this chapter was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology, Toronto, Canada, November 16–19. The research upon which this paper was based was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-0004323) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA18148). The funding agencies bear no responsibility for the analyses and interpretations drawn here. James F. Short, Jr. and Joachim Savelsberg generously provided comments on an earlier draft.     

Scientific-Methodological Conference of USSR Supreme Court

The Scientific Consultative Council under the USSR Supreme Court has held a scientific-methodological conference. It was in preparation for a long time. As early as July 1965, the journal Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost' informed its readers of the forthcoming conference and published an article by S. Radzhabov, "Improve the Administration of the Courts" [Sovershenstvovat' sudebnoe upravlenie], and another by S. Komissarov, "The Supervisory Powers of the USSR Supreme Court Need Improving" [Nadzornye polnomochiia Verkhovnogo Suda Soiuza SSR nuzhdaiutsia v sover-shenstvovanii]. In August of last year a report was published of a round-table conference conducted by the editors and devoted to the effectiveness of criminal punishment. Subsequently, the journals Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost', Sovetskaia iustitsiia, and Radians'ke pravo have been publishing, in each of their issues, articles, surveys, and proposals on improving the functioning of the courts and increasing the effectiveness of criminal punishment.     

Overview of Criminology in Europe

The editors of the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research wanted to include an article with an overview of European criminology in this special issue on European criminology. But in order to discover whether there is such a thing as European criminology, one should first look at the state of affairs of criminology in the individual countries of Europe. This article is an attempt to do so. It is based on a short questionnaire posted to individuals in 34 European countries, a report by Walgrave and Goris, entitled An Overview of University Institutions of Criminology (1996), an Internet search on selected keywords, and some background material available in the WODC library. It gives an overview of criminological research and research institutes; European co-operation, comparative research and European networks; criminological training; national societies of criminology and criminological periodicals.     

Drug Addiction in Russia

[From the editors of Pravozashchitnik:] The Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (www.svop.ru) is a nongovernmental organization. It was founded on 25 February 1992 in Moscow by a group of well-known and influential politicians, heads of business associations, eminent entrepreneurs, political and social activists, and representatives of the power ministries, the military-industrial complex, academe, and the mass media. The independent status and the considerable scientific and political authority that the council has attained enables it to play an important role in Russia's emerging civil society, a niche that state structures cannot fill.     

Derrida’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Purveyor of Truth</Emphasis> and Constitutional Reading

In this article the author explores Jacques Derrida’s reading in The Purveyor of Truth of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. In his essay, Derrida proposes a reading which differs markedly from the interpretation proposed by Lacan in his Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’. To appreciate Derrida’s reading, which is not hermeneutic-semantic in nature like that of Lacan, it is necessary to look at the relation of Derrida’s essay to his other texts on psychoanalysis, more specifically insofar as the Freudian death drive is concerned. The present article explores this ‘notion’ as elaborated on by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as well as Derrida’s reading of this text. It also investigates the importance of the ‘notion’ of the death drive as well as the significance of Derrida’s reading of The Purloined Letter for constitutional interpretation. This is a modified version of a paper presented at the Critical Legal Conference, 14–16 September 2007 at Birkbeck Law School, University of London.

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‘C’ is for commercial collaboration: enterprise and structure in the ‘middle market’ of counterfeit alcohol distribution

This article utilising the work of Pearson and Hobbs [1] defines the middle market in counterfeit alcohol. Drugs markets have a resemblance to counterfeit alcohol markets in as much that they share the illicit nature of the product and the need to distribute the product at the ‘street’ level. Drawing on two case studies taken from a European regulator the article details the dynamics of the market, the enterprise actions of the actors and how law enforcement responses can, in certain circumstances, make the task of the distributors easier. The traditional notions of organised crime are challenged and organisation of counterfeit alcohol markets is viewed as being reliant upon those who have legitimate access to the market and are able to develop networks of commercial collaborators who by their position in the legitimate market are able to conceal their illicit actions.     

Coke in Context: Early Modern Legal Observation and Sir Edward Coke's Reports

Our understanding of Sir Edward Coke's Reports turn upon an appreciation of his methodology as a reporter; the strengths and limitations of the Reports as a source of legal and political commentary have implications for our reading of the early Stuart constitution. This article locates Coke's Reports within the broader habits of record-keeping and observation employed by common lawyers in the early seventeenth century. It argues that a conflation of personal observation and professional opinion, promoted through the educational techniques of English law, provided Coke with a unique opportunity to place his own views at the heart of the profession.     

Law of the Russian Federation "On Countering Extremist Activity" (as amended by Federal Laws No. 148-FZ of July 27, 2006; No. 153-FZ of July 27, 2006; No. 71-FZ of May 10, 2007; and No. 211-FZ of July 24, 2007)

The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Chief Directorate of Internal Security names the sore points in relations between society and the police.

The personnel purges that took place in the MVD system in 2011 rid the police of "ballast" and united the ranks of honest policemen-head of the MVD Chief Directorate of Internal Security Iurii Draguntsov declared on Monday. In his opinion, the ministry succeeded in conducting an effective purge and in "infusing new blood." However, a representative of the independent [militia] trade unions is not in full agreement with this.     

Choose! But How?

The fate of restructuring [perestroika] depends to some degree upon the future form of the electoral mechanism. We in the Party training system have discussed this question at length in one-on-one conversations. This has enabled us to formulate a common viewpoint on the problem.