Russia has been experiencing the results of an acute economic crisis since 2012. However, the government has not been explicit in its declarations regarding austerity policies. On the contrary, it tends to represent its measures as "normal" and generally justifies cuts to public expenditure and reduced spending as part of a new understanding of the welfare state and socio-economic relations. Nevertheless, there is a clear connection between the crisis and the introduction of conservative discourse and the "traditional values" concept that targets gender equality both in public and private domains.

The Russian case study is exemplary and didactic. As Russia is new to market economics and has never developed a consistent neoliberal agenda, the shift to conservative ideologies came unexpectedly easily. Gender has become a battleground for the government to fight over social problems and austerity measures. Unlike the EU countries, the Russian government does not hesitate to challenge human rights and gender equality, easily shifting the blame to leftist ideologies – primarily feminism – that are held responsible for family instability and the poor state of demography and health. Using the concept of "traditional values" as a cover for increasing austerity measures, the government relies on short-term strategies. However, this shift to conservative public discourse has not been readily accepted by the Russian population, least of all by women. There is clear resistance from various social groups, including women. This resistance is not just taking the familiar form of public protests (although they have been taking place as well), but rather in the form of withdrawal from public space to minimise dealings with the state, a strategy familiar from the Soviet experience of resistance. Therefore, on the surface, Russian public discourse seems to be dominated by officially promoted ideologies, but this does not mean that society just accepts or even implements those ideologies eagerly.

At the same time, there is a clear tendency to follow supranational austerity measures by cutting public spending, amending social security policies, privatising care, and forcing women to return to the double-burden situation in the Soviet-type social contract by openly attacking feminist ideologies, gender equality, and human rights. In this situation, Russian NGOs, especially those with a human rights and gender-sensitive agenda, need more subtle strategies to deal with public policies, starting at the local government level.

A number of recent events in the last decade have renewed interest in Russian discourses on international law. This book evaluates and presents a contemporary analysis of Russian discourses on international law from various perspectives, including sociological, theoretical, political and philosophical. The aim is to identify how Russian interacts with international law, the reasons behind such interactions, and how such interactions compare with the general practice of international law. It also examines whether legal culture and other phenomena can justify Russia's interaction in international law. Russian Discourses on International Law explains Russia's interpretation of international law thrugh the lens of both leading western scholars and contemporary western-based Russian scholars. It will be of value to international law scholars looking for a better understanding of Russia's behaviour in international legal relations, law and society, foreign policy, and domestic application of international law. Further, those in fields such as sociology, politics, pholosophy, or general graduate students, lawyers, think tanks, government departments, and specialised Russian studies programmes will find this book helpful.

The use of data in society has seen an exponential growth in recent years. Data science, the field of research concerned with understanding and analyzing data, aims to find ways to operationalize data so that it can be beneficially used in society, for example in health applications, urban governance or smart household devices. The legal questions that accompany the rise of new, data-driven technologies however are underexplored. This book is the first volume that seeks to map the legal implications of the emergence of data science. It discusses the possibilities and limitations imposed by the current legal framework, considers whether regulation is needed to respond to problems raised by data science, and which ethical problems occur in relation to the use of data. It also considers the emergence of Data Science and Law as a new legal discipline.

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism—such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law—have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within often rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This third volume of the Reset DOC “Russia Workshop” collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings, providing a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law (Pravovoe Gosudarstvo), and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times, when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin’s death, the “thaw intelligentsia” of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR.  The third part focuses on the “time of troubles” under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and “system liberals”. Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a “reboot” of Russian liberalism?

While workers movements have been largely phased out and considered out-dated in most parts of the world during the 1990s, the 21st century has seen a surge in new and unprecedented forms of strikes and workers organisations. The collection of essays in this book, spanning countries across global South and North, provides an account of strikes and working class resistance in the 21st century. Through original case studies, the book looks at the various shades of workers’ movements, analysing different forms of popular organisation as responses to new social and economic conditions, such as restructuring of work and new areas of investment.

This book combines the approaches of history and criminology to study parricide and non-fatal violence against parents from across traditional period and geographical boundaries, encompassing research on Asia as well as Europe and North America. Parricide and non-fatal violence against parents are rare but significant forms of family violence. They have been perceived to be a recent phenomenon related to bad parenting and child abuse often in poorer socioeconomic circumstances – yet they have a history, which provides insights for modern-day explanation and intervention. Research on violence against parents has concentrated on child abuse and mental illness but, by using a rich array of primary and secondary documents, such as court cases, criminal statistics, newspaper reports, and legal and medical literature, this book shows that violence against parents is also shaped by conflicts related to parental authority, the rise of children’s rights, conflicting economic and emotional expectations, and other sociohistorical factors.

The efficiency approach, as advocated by the Chicago School in particular, only provides a very narrow approach to competition law analysis that relies on the preferences of consumers. This approach remains especially insufficient for the regulation of firms that provide citizens with politically relevant news and information. In times of digitisation, citizens increasingly rely on news disseminated by Internet intermediaries such as Facebook, Twitter or Google for making political decisions. Such firms design their business models and their algorithms for selecting the news according to a purely economic rationale. Yet recent research indicates that dissemination of news through social platforms in particular has a negative impact on the democratic process by favouring the dissemination of false factual statements, fake news and unverifiable conspiracy theories within closed communities and, ultimately, leads to radicalisation and a division of society along political and ideological lines. Experience based on the Brexit referendum in the UK and the recent presidential elections in the US highlights the ability of populist political movements to abuse the business rationale of Internet intermediaries and the functioning of their algorithms in order to win popular votes with their ‘post-truth politics’. This article relies on competition law principles to discuss future approaches to regulating the market for political ideas at the interface of competition law and media law in the new digital age. Based on constitutional considerations the article rests on the assumption that media markets should not only provide news that responds best to the psychological predispositions and subjective beliefs of the individual citizen, but also provide correct information and diversity of opinion as a basis for making informed democratic decisions.

The fourth edition of this book has been entirely re-written, this time co-authored by Ioannis Lianos with the contribution of Paolo Siciliani. It includes substantially more material on the economics of competition law and integrates, for the first time, UK competition law materials and commentary. An additional new feature is greater introductory and analytical commentary, making this book suitable for use either as a stand-alone text and materials book, or as a book of materials to be used in conjunction with a second text. It will continue to be one of the best books for undergraduate and post-graduate students in competition law, providing them with the necessary critical understanding of the law, its social and economic context, and the necessary depth of analysis in order to provide them with the knowledge and tools they need for practising competition law. The materials have been completely updated to take into account recent developments in EU and UK competition law, including extracts from the leading cases of Cartes Bancaires, Intel, Lundbeck, Streetmap v Google, the most recent versions of the Block Exemption Regulations and the Europan Commission's and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Guidance, recent UK and other National Competition Authorities (NCA) cases in digital markets, the recent European Commission's investigations against Google (Alphabet), recent merger cases and guidance and a detailed analysis of enforcement (including private enforcement, criminal enforcement and Alternative Dispute Resolution) and procedure in both the EU and UK competition law. The book also includes commentary on the implications of Brexit in competition law enforcement in the UK. Economic analysis is presented in a non-technical way so as to enable students without any background in economics to understand the economic content of the law and to be able to critically assess economic evidence often presented in competition law cases. The book is co-authored by an economist and constitutes the only textbook/casebook in the market with a balanced incorporation of both law and economics. Other sources of wisdom for competition law, such as economic sociology and business studies, are also referred to and analyzed. The bulk of the text is made up of analysis supplemented with extracts from Commission Decisions and decisions of NCAs (in particular the UK ones), Opinions of the Advocates General at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and judgments of the CJEU and General Court. These are supplemented by extracts from EU legislation, and comments, notes and questions prepared by the authors for each important judgment or decision so as to enhance students' understanding of the economic and legal context of the specific case.

A complex analysis of the social and economic consequences of China, Ukraine, and Russia’s accession to the WTO was used to identify recommendations for the most successful adaptation of Russia to WTO standards. Russia tries to adapt to the WTO standards. The study focuses on the Chinese experience. China’s membership in the WTO is extremely useful for Russia from due to China’s positive influence on the development of its economy , as there has been expansion in the industrial and production sectors of its economy and promotion of goods in world markets, as well as an opportunity to use the WTO’s legal instruments for national domestic market protection.

China’s positive experience as a WTO member somehow contrasts with the described experience of Ukraine. An assessment of Ukraine’s versatile policy and its association with the EU allowed concluded that it is impossible for Ukraine to follow two ways at once: that of Eurasian integration and that of European integration.

Recently, the aggravated trade, economic and political confrontations between Russia and its American and European partners spurred radical changes in Russia’s economic strategy. Areas of such transformations can be determined by understanding both the positive and negative experiences of Russia’s old trade partners, namely China and Ukraine as they joined the world economic environment.

Why has there been a human rights backlash in Russia despite the country having been part of the European human rights protection system since the late 1990s? To what extent does Russia implement judgments of the Strasbourg Court, and to what extent does it resist the implementation? This fascinating study investigates Russia's turbulent relationship with the European Court of Human Rights and examines whether the Strasbourg court has indeed had the effect of increasing the protection of human rights in Russia. Researchers and scholars of law and political science with a particular interest in human rights and Russia will benefit from this in-depth exploration of the background of this subject.

From 18 to 21 November 2015, in the Vatican, the Congregation for Catholic Education celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Gravissimum Educationis and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. As part of these celebrations, the Congregation aimed to re-energise the Catholic Church’s commitment to education by means of a World Congress entitled ‘Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion’. The main aim of the Congress was to re-energise the role of Catholic schools and universities that act in the name of the Universal Church. The Congress urged more than 5,000 participants to step up efforts to promote dialogue in times of spiritual poverty, self-referential exclusiveness, harmful spread of ideological viewpoints, and the lowering of the general level of culture.

In line with the aims of the Congress, and under its hospitable auspices, the European Association for Education Law and Policy (ELA) held a special conference. The ELA sessions within the larger Congress focussed mainly on the re-consideration of the role that religion plays in education in general. The main concern of this legal panel, therefore, was the way religious studies, the rights of believers, and non-believers are accommodated in both secular and confessional schools and universities around the world. Thus, the ELA sessions encompassed the transformation and renewal of religion in education in general (not only Catholic education), across various sectors of society.

This issue is a compilation of papers presented at ELA sessions in the Vatican. The papers presented at the ELA sessions were submitted to double blind peer review processes and only the best accepted and selected. The editors are already in possession of a full draft of the manuscript. This draft has been extensively edited for language and coherency already. The contributions composing this issue provide an all-encompassing analysis of the position of religion in education across the globe and how religious distinctiveness in education can be promoted. This volume deals, first, with overarching concepts of accommodating religious distinctiveness at schools and understanding the place of religion in compulsory instruction. Second, it provides important case studies explaining in much detail the various approaches to reconciliation of law and state, religion and education, secularism and diversity that exist in the world.  

Although there are books about education and religion on the market, this volume focuses specifically on renewing a passion for protecting religious distinctiveness in increasingly secular societies. Emphasis is placed on how to achieve equality and religious freedom in democratic societies, while focusing on protecting the human dignity of religious adherents (parents and learners/children) through the protection of their religious distinctiveness. The manuscript also compiles the work of several academic experts in law and education and several expert practitioners in law and education (deans, ministers of education etc). The wide spectrum of countries discussed (USA, Europe, Australia, South Africa, South America) provide a holistic picture of religious distinctiveness across the globe. Practical suggestions towards maintaining religious distinctiveness are also provided. What is even more unique is the fact that the manuscript presents various and competing perspectives on religious distinctiveness.

This book seeks to provide a panorama of the issues arising from pluralism in the education system and of judicial responses to them around the globe. In it, thirty-four authors representing many different legal cultures have selected and commented the most significant judicial decisions in each of the jurisdictions analysed. The topics addressed include religious and cultural symbols; faith-based, religious, and citizenship education; freedom of teaching and scientific freedom; homeschooling; authorization, funding and other matters concerning denominational and private schools, among other legal disputes. The reader will easily sense many different ideological orientations throughout the book’s thirty-seven chapters, which is only the result of pluralism itself and of scientific freedom. Nevertheless, the editors believe that all of the authors have inherently favoured the desire to understand the challenges of pluralism and to convey knowledge that is relevant for a public debate rather than defending their own particular point of view. Indeed, facilitating debate might be considered to be the best achievement of a publication of this kind. The book is divided into six parts. The introductory part features a chapter by the editors concerning the implementation and justiciability of the right to education, and a second chapter by Prof. Charles L. Glenn providing an in-depth historical essay on the importance of debates over religion and education. The five remaining parts reflect a geographical division: Part II includes two chapters on international human rights bodies (the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee); parts III to VI group national courts’ decisions by region: Europe, the Americas, Africa, and lastly Asia and Australia.

The Comparative Labor Law Dossier (CLLD) in this issue 2/2017 of IUSLabor is dedicated to teleworking and labor conditions. We have had the collaboration of internationally renowned academics and professionals from Belgium, France, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, The U.K, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Canada.

The building of an increasingly integrated system from an economic point of view in the “Eurasian” space is a phenomenon superficially evaluated by that broad part of the Western literature which simply includes it in the general claim of Russia to win lost territories of the former Trsarist and Soviet Empires. It is therefore considered an almost pretentious project when analyzed from a purely geopolitical perspective rather than economic. Such kind of approach may, however, be short-sighted, in the absence of a detailed  study of the complex roots or the historical, cultural and economic conditions justifying the integration on the former Soviet Union space, and in particular on the Eurasian one.

The present volume contains the contributions of experts from different disciplines with different sensitivity and national memberships. The hot confrontation between speakers from Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania on the one hand and Russia on the other seems to be constructive, a positive model of interaction between historically and geographically close worlds even if in a period of tough opposition.

The scientific research focuses on the pressing issue of an implementation of the rule of law and justice accessibility in Russia as a legal state. The core of the research is formed by a comparative study of the issues and objectives of the 1991 Concept of Judicial Reform of Russian Federation and the results of changes in procedural and judicial system legislation during the last 25 years. A comparison is also made between the standards of public services of legal dispute resolution provided by a public legislative authority and the standards of general public services by a public agency and local self-government body and the standards of a fair trial. Comparison is made not only by the level of legal guarantees for public service customers, but also by the dynamics of Russia’s process of becoming a legal state through the implementation of its judicial reform. Procedural legislation is assessed for comprehensiveness of legal provisions of judicial procedures: the order and conditions of a public service; consistency of norms, transparency of the court activities, the provision of safeguards against judicial arbitrariness and red tape, the mechanisms of efficiency enhancement and communication with the court, the compensation for the violation of the fair trial rights in civil, commercial, administrative and criminal proceedings. The court accessibility is assessed for compliance with procedural aspects of the fair trial concept: the conditions of application for the public service, the legal recourse procedures and eligibility terms, terms and size of an official fee, the possibility of fee deferral and exemption, convenience of a public fee calculation, rules of the appeal procedure. Judicial legislation is analyzed in relationship to the principles of transparency and independence of a fair trial concept in the institutional aspect. This scientific study focuses on a transfer of judiciary public services into an electronic sphere, the interaction between the courts and the interaction between courts and the executive bodies: it identifies problems and suggests possible solutions. The work assesses an effectiveness of an implementation of the 1991 Concept of Judicial Reform of Russian Federation and the targeted Federal Programs for the Development of the Judiciary, and their compatibility with the concept of sustainable development in the judicial system. The results of this scientific research have practical value, both for Russian national system and foreign countries seeking to promote the rule of law and court accessibility in the context of the UN sustainable development concept.

The concept of ‘employee’ is arguably the most important one in labour law, defi ning, as it does, the scope of the discipline as a whole. This important new publication aims to develop a restatement of the concept of the employee in European labour law. The study identifi es both problems and solutions that have emerged, clearly setting out comparisons between the different member states’ approaches. The country reports explore both statutes and case law, tracking their contribution to legal doctrine. The objective of the restatement is to increase knowledge and gain a better understanding of one of the most crucial aspects of European labour law.

The volume presents a selection of contributions mostly from the fourteenth annual conference in commemoration of Prof Marco Biagi on Wellbeing at and through work held in Modena (Italy) on 17–18 March 2016. The papers, which form the chapters in this volume, cover a number of countries and a wide range of issues in relation to quality of work and employee well-being including discrimination, harassment, disability, and work-life balance addressing them in an interdisciplinary perspective. Moreover, a number of regulatory approaches ranging from legislative interventions to voluntary measures are analysed in an attempt to cast light on the problem of well-being at work.

It has been widely acknowledged that current international intellectual property (IP) standard setting is carried through bilateral and plurilateral negotiations, and that the EU is very much involved in this process. It is notably the case of standards pertaining to the rights protecting designs, which received a particularly flexible set of minimum standards under the TRIPS WTO agreement. Building on the growing research both in IP rights in preferential trade agreements and design law, this paper looks at the IP chapters of EU agreements with third countries, assessing their deepness and the flexibility they maintain to uncover the trends of such design law internationalization. It evaluates how design rights, which have been seen in the past as less instrumental for business expansion abroad compared to trademark right and copyright, start to be elevated as strategic tools for business internationalization.

Comparative legal history is a fashionable new discipline which aims at a better understanding of the law’s past by comparing similarities and differences of legal phenomena in two or more jurisdictions beyond the limits of national legal histories. Despite its popularity in Europe, it still lacks comparative projects that cover both Western and Eastern areas of the Continent, not least because the methodology of such comparison requires proper consideration and cannot be simply copied from comparative law or national legal histories. The present article evaluates the applicability of the dominant method of today’s comparative law (the functional one) in the domain of the general contract law of the first codifications in the major jurisdictions of Continental Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Russia) during the 'long 19th century'. This subject matter is chosen by way of example as a 'legal cross-road' of legal concepts and models, more susceptible to changes, in- novations, borrowings, and closely linked to social needs. In the main part of the article, it is argued that the adaptation of the functional method to the needs of comparison in legal history becomes plausible due to at least two factors. First, comparatists mitigated the rigid assumptions of the 'classical' functionalism of the 20th century (rejecting its privileged status and purely functional perception of law, irrebuttable presumptions of similarity and unification of compared legal systems etc.). Second, many legal historians, like the drafters of the first civil codes in Western and Eastern Europe, also believe that law is more than minimally connected to social problems and manifests itself primarily through its actual application. On the basis of such premises, the author of this article discusses potential benefits and limitations of researching general contract law in the selected jurisdictions with the functional method. At the preparatory (descriptive) stage, it can be useful to assure comparability of contract law in the selected civil codes, to identify omissions in the codified general rules on contracts, and to arrange legal provisions around practically relevant issues. At the stage of analysis, functionalism can be coupled with teleological interpretation of legal norms to enable us to understand better the link between the application of the legal rules, their legal purposes, and the practical social problems serving as tertium comparationis for all the compared jurisdictions. A sketch of such an analysis in the final part of the article allows to conclude that research with the help of the functional method narrows our perception of law as a cultural phenomenon and breaks the inner doctrinal logic, but in return, it offers a starting point for much needed dialogue of legal historians with a wider legal community.

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on post-capitalist economy by exploring the contours of a sustainability-oriented model of economic governance. To this end, the article analyzes the issues of sustainable development in the three main strands of international economic law (trade, investment, and finance) at national and transnational levels. The analysis reveals a policy interdependence between international economic law and sustainable development. The latter hence represents a specific regulatory construct that aims at compensating the losses of exhaustible resources with investments in technology and knowledge. This, however, merely justifies and legitimizes the over-exploitation of certain parts of the globe, including not only their natural resources, but also human and other capitals. To overcome these unsustainable models, the article proposes a paradigm shift away from the standard of sustainable development in international economic law, towards one of sustainability. The idea is to replace sustainable development with sustainable economy. Law can act as a trigger of such a shift through ensuring trust and cooperation between public institutions, private companies, civil society, local communities, and individual citizens. 

Keywords: sustainability law; social justice; degrowth; low-carbon sharing economy;progressive sustainability agenda

This study concerns the use of crypto-currency with specific reference to the situation in Russia. A variety of such systems exist; Bitcoin, however, is perhaps the best-known example and will be used as synonymous with the concept throughout this article. Our findings not only show how the views of Russian government bodies are formed and developed, but also sheds light on the specific innovative methods which legal entities use for development of the economy. Consideration will be given to recent developments within Russia which has been more active than many countries in seeking to clarify the status of Bitcoin and providing for the regulation of the technology.

 

 

 

Russia and Ukraine have recently adopted complex statutes on consumer credit. Ukraine, unlike Russia, declared the aim of the new act, inter alia, harmonization of the legislation with international and EU standards. Prior to enactment, both countries had a fragmentary regulation of few aspects of consumer credit in general consumer protection laws. I consider peculiarities of the elimination of the contract disproportion of debtor and creditor rights in contracts on consumer credit under new Russian and Ukrainian regulations from a comparative perspective. EU law does not regulate some important issues covered by Russian and Ukrainian legislations, e.g. priority of payments. On the contrary, some useful concepts, which are applicable to consumer loans under EU law, like “linked credits,” “open-end agreements” are absent in both Russian and Ukrainian laws. While comparing new Russian and Ukrainian consumer credit statutes, it is clear that in some aspects the Ukrainian one is pro-consumer, and in some other aspects the Russian one is more pro-consumer. Some provisions of both Russian and Ukrainian consumer credit statutes are very controversial and unclear; in some instances they could lead to debt slavery, so they must be corrected in the future.

The following article considers the history of the Juridical Council of the Provisional Government from a biographical methodological perspective. The Juridical Council was established in March 1917 after the February Revolution in the system of the Provisional Government as a governmental body of legal expertise. The paper provides a summary of biographical information about lawyers of the Juridical Council (Vasily Maklakov, Fyodor Kokoshkin, Nikolay Lazarevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Moisey Adzhemov and Baron Boris Nolde), their origin, education, political career, professional and academic interests. Most of lawyers in the Council were descendants of noble Moscow and St. Petersburg families and belonged to big city intelligentsia circles. They graduated from Moscow University and St. Petersburg University in 1890s during golden era of Russian legal university education and their views concerning law, government, liberalism, parliamentarism and public role of legal profession were formed under a great influence of liberal professorate and in the atmosphere, when a university seemed to be the most liberal institute of the conservative era. The analysis of biographical information leads to a conclusion that lawyers of the Council developed a new legal ethos, the characteristic feature of which was the adherence to the ideology of rule of law and civil society.

The article focuses on legal tradition recognizes both the plurality of understandings of law and the historical construction of all legal systems conform to the principles of Western legalism. It mentions Russian expansion and in the context of "international" law and normativity of Russia's legal history and connection between law and sovereignty in the transforming polity. It also mentions recognized ruler was often, from the perspective of a subject, an outsider from another ethnicity.

As of 2015 Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and (since May 2015) Kyrgyzstan have entered into the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) with the ambitious goal of ultimately transforming it into a “Eurasian Union” with a deeper confederative structure in the future. Parallels between this regional integration project and the European Union integration process are emerging. But there are also marked differences between them. The article highlights those parallels and differences in order to assess the general prospects for harmonizing labor law among the member states and to clarify how much of the EU experience in the harmonization of labor law may be applicable to the Eurasian integration project. The completely different roots and ways to harmonize the national labor law systems within the EU and the EAEU are also discussed in the article. The authors claim that the approaches to harmonizing labor law in the two regions are mirror images of each other. While the EU project attempts to provide at least a partial common legal framework for certain separate aspects of legal regulation of labor among the very diverse national labor law systems, the EAEU currently refuses even to address the harmonization of national labor laws. However, the national labor law systems of EAEU member states are already much more homogenous than in the EU. Therefore, labor law harmonization in the EAEU may develop as a consequence of its economic integration and single market.

In this article, we attempt to trace the semantic changes two key concepts of the Modern period - fundamental law and constitution underwent at the 18th century and investigates how these European concepts were adapted and used in the Russian political language. The concept of the constitution and fundamental laws in eighteenth-century political discourse had differing connotations: while the constitution was used mainly to describe the form of government, the concept of fundamental laws referred to historically developing legal traditions which have been adopted as norms of political law. The most radical vision of constitution in the 18th century went further than identify it with the fundamental law, demanding that the latter should enshrine the principles of civil rights and liberties of the Nation, and the legal guarantees thereof. However, this radical view, arising at the end of the century, was far from universal, and the discussion around various understandings of this concept was still to continue for many years.  

The human factor is always decisive in social development. The role of active behavior and above all economic behavior is obvious. However, there are some difficulties: the law regulates predominantly "external" behavior; psychology covers interests, motives, will, emotions.   This paper analyzes individuals’ interests and motives in economics. Coherence and contradictions of the labor interests are investigated on the basis of a survey made in several organizations. The rank of interests (economic, professional, career, group, corporate, territorial, and common civil) in the dependence of labor group type (shareholders, top managers, line managers, employees) is formed.  

The study analyses the EU Internal market from a dynamic and a contextual perspective, taking into account, not just the normative changes brought by the intense legislative and judicial activity in this area, but also the important economic and technological transformations that have largely altered the structure of the global economy in the last two to three decades. These could, in my view, challenge the first principles upon which the EU economic integration process and, in particular the “single market” idea, is based. This “updating” of the Internal market project is essential if one is to critically reflect on the role and the specificity of the EU integration process, in the context of the broader globalization movement. The first part of the paper introduces the “neo-functionalist” perspective, which has largely influenced the EU economic integration process, from its incipiency, and explores its theoretical linkages with trade theory (the law of one price), thus presenting the fundamental tenets of positive EU Internal market law. The second part delves into the subsequent mutation of the economic integration ideal towards the more modular and scalar concept of “regulatory convergence”. Opening the black box of economic integration will lead us to analyse its transformation, as a result of a paradigm shift currently occurring in the organization of the global process of economic production, with the development of global value chains, and the important role of technology, in particular the Internet, in promoting economic integration not through law, but through code. The study predicts that addressing more systematically the effect of both private and public obstacles to trade should take centre-stage if one is to opt for a more holistic and dynamic perspective in analysing the process of economic integration. A more extensive intervention of the competition law tool and other regulatory initiatives against private restrictions to trade is therefore to be expected in the future, these areas of law taking a more prevalent part in the EU Internal market law compass. The study discusses in some detail the recent legislative and jurisprudential developments with regard to geo-blocking and geo-filtering practices. The last part of the study provides some concluding thoughts on the need for the EU Internal market concept to be updated and raises some questions with regard to its ontology in the context of a globalized economy.

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The Europeanization of legal scholarship and legal education facilitates the emergence of comparative legal science as a promising new tool to discover similarities and differences between two or more jurisdictions and their past development. Yet, the specific methodology of such studies is still not clear. Some legal historians hold that comparative legal history does not or should not have its own methodology other than that of comparative law. Others warn against imposing a contemporary agenda and toolbox on legal history. The author of this article aims to clarify this debate by examining the prospect of applying one of the most popular methods of comparative law – the functional method – to the domain of legal history. On the basis of several examples from the European legal past he claims that examining the functions (the social purpose) of legal norms can help legal historians in three ways: first, to determine the objects of comparison and the sources of analysis, despite the variety of verbal shortcuts (the initial stage of research); second, to analyse legal norms from the perspective of solving social problems in the past – to study the 'law in action'; and third, to arrange the results of the research according to meaningful criteria at the final stage.

Comparative legal history is a fashionable new discipline which aims at a better understanding of the law's past by comparing similarities and differences of legal phenomena in two or more jurisdictions beyond the limits of national legal histories. Despite its popularity in Europe, it still lacks comparative projects that cover both Western and Eastern areas of the Continent, not least because the methodology of such comparison requires proper consideration and cannot be simply copied from comparative law or national legal histories. The present article evaluates the applicability of the dominant method of today's comparative law (the functional one) in the domain of the general contract law of the first codifications in the major jurisdictions of Continental Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Russia) during the 'long 19th century'. This subject matter is chosen by way of example as a 'legal cross-road' of legal concepts and models, more susceptible to changes, innovations, borrowings, and closely linked to social needs. In the main part of the article, it is argued that the adaptation of the functional method to the needs of comparison in legal history becomes plausible due to at least two factors. First, comparatists mitigated the rigid assumptions of the 'classical' functionalism of the 20th century (rejecting its privileged status and purely functional perception of law, irrebuttable presumptions of similarity and unification of compared legal systems etc.). Second, many legal historians, like the drafters of the first civil codes in Western and Eastern Europe, also believe that law is more than minimally connected to social problems and manifests itself primarily through its actual application. On the basis of such premises, the author of this article discusses potential benefits and limitations of researching general contract law in the selected jurisdictions with the functional method. At the preparatory (descriptive) stage, it can be useful to assure comparability of contract law in the selected civil codes, to identify omissions in the codified general rules on contracts, and to arrange legal provisions around practically relevant issues. At the stage of analysis, functionalism can be coupled with teleological interpretation of legal norms to enable us to understand better the link between the application of the legal rules, their legal purposes, and the practical social problems serving as tertium comparationis for all the compared jurisdictions. A sketch of such an analysis in the final part of the article allows to conclude that a research with the help of the functional method narrows our perception of law as a cultural phenomenon and breaks the inner doctrinal logic, but in return, it offers a starting point for a much needed dialogue of legal historians with a wider legal community.

The Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) has over time developed a practice of adopting so-called “positive dismissals” (Pozitivnoe Opredelenie) which complements (but also undermines) the existent formal procedure of only delivering decisions on merits with Rulings (Postanovlenie). The paper explores the uses of this peculiar practice. I show that Positive Dismissals are used by the Court to overcome the rigidity of the formal procedure where this is necessary for reasons of intraorganizational or political expediency. To do that I construct and analyze quantitatively a unique comprehensive dataset of all decisions handed down by the RCC roughly in the first two decades of its existence (1995-2015, N=22334). I show that “positive dismissals” are used whenever the case is deemed too important to be simply dismissed (for example, if it is submitted by a powerful petitioner), or when the Court cannot dismiss a case but wants to keep low profile to avoid political risks (for example, with the politically salient cases during election years).

In different countries of the world the place of religion in education differs. In most of the European countries teaching of religion in public (or state-funded) school exists in one form or another. In Russia religious education can be received by the student at his or her own discretion or at discretion of the parents in the religious educational establishment. Education in public (state and municipal) organizations engaged in educational activity has a strictly secular nature. This principle is implemented in the Russian legislation and practice is most visible in disputes arising at the crossroad of religion and education as resolved by Russian courts. The most disputed issues concern the regulation of school uniform and the teaching of subjects ‘Fundamentals of Religious cultures and secular ethics’ and ‘Fundamentals of spiritual and moral culture of Russian nations’ as a compulsory subject in public schools. The court practice on the issue keeps developing, but it's analysis shows that the secular nature of education in Russia is not so undoubted as it may seem.  

The Bayer/Monsanto merger forms part of the recent wave of mega-mergers that has transformed the structure of the factors of production segments of the global food value chain in recent decades. If it is approved, it will lead to the creation of a tight oligopoly of three multinationals that will control almost 2/3 of the global production in seeds and agro-chems, as well as the valuable Big Data and IT platforms that are crucial for “smart farming”. This high level of concentration will undoubtedly lead to price rises for seeds and pesticides, the increase of the technological and economic dependence of farmers on a few global integrated one-stop shop platforms, the reduction of independent centres of innovation activity in the industry and consequently of innovation, due to reduced competition. More importantly, this merger is about control of the global food value chains as well as of the direction of the innovative effort in this industry in the next few decades. Recent technological advances enable us to envision a future away from the agro-chem model of agricultural production, with the adoption of a production model that is respectful of the environment and biodiversity, and also providing smallholders more opportunities to increase their revenue and the independence to invest in innovative ways of farming. By ensuring that the global food value chain remains tightly controlled by three mega-corporations (and their integrated platforms), the recent merger wave in this industry will lead to entrench the market power of the dominant players for the decades to come and to freeze the innovative effort to R&D that is compatible with the business model of the incumbents.

The law is a difficult social phenomenon determining the social life and even the international interaction of subjects. There is no uniform direction of its functioning, but it is possible to determine various parallel aspects that describe legal development. National tendencies of legal regulation predetermine the whole functioning of a legal system, which is a broad concept including not only positive regulation. This paper analyses the following tendencies: expansion of legal regulation; forms of legal regulation; institutionalization; execution of legal requirements; technical progress.

This article studies the approach of Islamic legal thought to the idea of Caliphate. The author explains the fundamental principles of the Islamic concept of the state as an instrument for defending and maintaining religion and dealing with worldly affairs. Modern Islamic thought, taking into consideration the historical evolution of Islamic statehood under the influence of objective political circumstances, came to the key conclusion that an Islamic state is not restricted to a unified Caliphate (the Caliphate on the way of the prophecy). Other models of power are quite admissible if they are meeting the aims of the Caliphate.

Water has always been an important resource for Central Asian states and peoples. Different rulers at different times used water, and access to it, as an instrument of political and even military influence. When the Russian Empire expanded into Central Asia, seizing substantial parts of three central Asian khanates (Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand) and established its own protectorate over these states, its also found that water was one of the most effective means to control the rulers and peoples of Central Asia. The use of water and irrigation policy as an instrument of rule was effectively used by the Russian Empire in its relations with the Central Asian khanates and this has already been the subject of investigation. This paper analyses the legal regulation of water use and the irrigation policy of the Russian Empire in Turkestan in order to influence the Bukharan Emirate and the Khivan Khanate during the epoch of the Russian protectorate (1870s–1910s). The paper demonstrates how the internal “water law” was a starting point in Russian policy towards Bukhara and Khiva, and shows that each subsequent stage was closely connected to the evolution of the “water law” in the Russian Turkestan. The sources are official documents (including legal acts) of the Russian Empire, correspondence of Russian and Central Asian statesmen, memoirs of contemporaries and the notes of Russian visitors to khanates (diplomats, engineers, etc.) who participated in the realization of Russian water policy in Bukhara and Khiva and could estimate its effectiveness.

The paper explores the competition dynamics of the global seed market. It documents the growth strategies of the major seed companies, in particular their M&A activity and their reliance on complex intellectual property strategies in order to offer a one stop shop solution to farmers. Recent merger activity in this sector (the Monsanto bid to buy Syngenta, the DuPont and Dow merger deal, ChemChina’s bid to buy Syngenta) illustrates its rapid transformation from an already concentrated industry to a tight oligopoly on a global scale. The increasing global consolidation of this industry raises new challenges for competition law enforcement authorities dealing with the emergence of new powerful actors at the factor of production (input) level, in view of the broader concerns animating public policy in the food sector and the existence of a nexus of international commitments for biodiversity, sustainability, the right to food etc. By exploring this under-studied but fascinating area of competition law enforcement we open the debate over the inclusion of broader public interest concerns in competition policy and the consideration of its distributive impact from a global perspective.

The paper analyzes legal issues associated with application of existing contract law provisions to  so-called Smart contracts, defined in the paper as “agreements existing in the form of software  code implemented on the Blockchain platform, which ensures autonomy and self-executive  nature of Smart contract terms based on predetermined set of factors”. The paper consists of  several sections. In the first section, the paper outlines peculiarities of Blockchain technology as  currently implemented in Bitcoin cryptocurrency and which forms the core of Smart contracts. In  the second section, the main characteristic features of Smart contracts are described. Finally, the  paper outlines key tensions between classic contract law and Smart contracts.. The conclusion  section sets the core question for analysis of the perspectives of implementation of this  technology by governments: “How to align the powers of the government with Blockchain if  there is no central authority but only distributed technologies”. The author suggests two  solutions, which are not optimal: 1) providing the state authorities with the status of a Superuser  with extra powers and 2) relying on traditional remedies and enforcement practices, by pursuing  specific individuals – parties to Smart contract - in offline mode. It is emphasized that those  jurisdictions, which have the most Blockchain-friendly regulations will have competitive  advantage in attraction of new innovative business models and companies willing to exploit  them in a legal way.

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has its own judicial body tasked with ensuring the uniform application of EAEU law by member states and institutions. The EAEU Court has a number of important powers; however, it is noteworthy, that such crucial ones as the preliminary ruling procedure and the ability to review actions of member states upon request of the EAEU regulatory body are missing. This paper reviews the missing powers in a search for the reasons behind their removal, and the ensuing ramifications. It also uncovers other limitations of the Eurasian judiciary and its strained relationships with national judiciaries. It is argued, that the EAEU Court will struggle to fulfil its mission without solutions compensating its limited powers.

This paper reviews the activity of professional legal organizations as factors in the transfer from limited access order (LAO) to open access order (OAO) according to the theory of North, Wallis and Weingast. By analyzing the experience of lawyers’ collective action in developing countries, this paper proposes a decision tree explaining the process of the mobilization of the legal community to counter violations of the law by the ruling elite. It shows that this collective action plays a significant role in implementing the rule of law. However, the efficiency of such collective action in a particular country depends on the institutional capacity of its legal association and on the position of the professional elite leading it. The history of the development of Russian legal advocacy shows that exogenous shocks actually stimulate the collective action of lawyers, which in turn compels the government to respond.