new justices of the peace in the Russian Federation: A cornerstone of judicial reform?, The

The first years of Putin's presidency witnessed a major acceleration of the reform of the courts in Russia, which was marked by significant increases in funding, attempts to make judges more accountable as well as independent, the expansion of trial by jury, and new power for judges (for example, in deciding on the use of pretrial detention). Judges also dealt with an increasing number of challenges to the legality of actions of government officials.1 Less well known, though, is the fact that the nature of the courts and judges with whom most members of the public had contact also began changing through the establishment of a new layer of the court system: justice of the peace (JP) courts.

The JP courts gained legislative authorization from the federal government at the end of 1998, but their creation required further legislation in the center and regions, as well as budgetary authorization. Yet by the end of 2002 nearly 5,000 justices of the peace had been appointed, most of whom had begun work, representing an increase in the total number of judges in the country by more than a quarter (in two-and-a-half years). Moreover, plans were underway (within the leadership of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the Judicial Department) to gain authorization and budget to add another 4,500 justices, so that one out of every three judges in the country would be a justice of the peace.2 The rest of the existing court system remained in place: the Constitutional Court (and republican constitutional courts); the arbitrazh courts; and the courts of general jurisdiction, Supreme Court, the eighty-nine regional and republican supreme courts, and the approximately 2,000 district courts. But a significant part of the latter's jurisdiction was assumed by the JPs, making possible a reduction in caseload and improvement in the quality of the handling of more serious or complicated cases.

The establishment of JPs in Russia in the twenty-first century represented the fulfillment of the vision of Russian judicial reformers of the early 1990s, who sought the revival of tsarist institutions that the Bolsheviks had discarded.

Although post-Soviet JPs might be seen as revivals, their resemblance to their tsarist forerunners turned out to be small.

Justice of the peace courts command further attention because of their unusual status within Russia's federal system of government. The new justice of the peace courts are hybrid courts, for which the governments of the federal government and those of the subjects share responsibility in a unique blend.

In this article, I explore the prehistory of the contemporary JP courts, from the romantic adoption by reformers of a piece of the tsarist past through a series of changes in conception and design that produced the law on justices of the peace in 1998. I then analyze the actual establishment of the courts in various parts of the Russian Federation, including the choice and recruitment of justices and the role of regional and republican governments in the administration of the courts. Finally, I examine the actual practice of the justices of the peace, their impact on the rest of the court system and their larger significance.

From Reformers' Dreams to Legal Authorization

The idea of establishing justices of the peace gained public attention in Russia in fall 1991, when it was included in the judicial reform agenda set out in the Conception of Judicial Reform approved by the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in October. That document had been written over the course of a year by a group of nine jurists, including academic specialists in criminal procedure, at the request of the Supreme Soviet's Committee for Legal Affairs. One of the goals of the group was to democratize the administration of justice in Russia, and toward this end the group fastened on reviving from the tsarist past both trial by jury and justices of the peace, two institutions that the Bolsheviks had dismantled.3

During 1991 the revival of justices of the peace appeared as well in the Suggestions for a Conception of Judicial Reform prepared by a working group of the Organizational Committee for the First Congress of Judges, including members of the Supreme Court and officials from the Ministry of Justice. At the first Congress, which convened in October shortly before the Supreme Soviet's approval of the Conception of Judicial Reform, President Boris Yeltsin's speech included the words "Probably the time has come to revive the institution of Justices of the Peace stopped after 1917."4

But what was that institution, and what did the Russian judicial reformers of 1991 envisage in its revival? The tsarist forerunner, established as part of the Judicial Reform of 1864, was a court for minor civil and criminal cases (with punishments of up to one-and-a-half years of confinement) that was meant to apply customary as well as statutory law, to use mediation where possible, and to instruct the public in the formal law. The justices were public servants of a modest rank who received low salaries and were elected to their posts for three-year terms. To qualify for the post, aspirants had to be twenty-five, male, have Russian citizenship, live in the district, have graduated from high school, and own some real estate. In short, justice of the peace courts were part of the judicial system and the justices were full-time employees of the state, but they were amateurs as far as knowledge of the law was concerned. Although intended to mediate and involve the parties in dispute resolution, justices at busy urban courts rarely had time for such niceties and quickly decided the many cases of personal insults and domestic disputes that members of the public brought to them. In one sense, though, they were separate from the other courts. Appeals from the justices of the peace were heard by the so-called congresses of JPs and could not be brought to any of the higher courts.5