The Experience of Codifying Administrative Law in the Russian Empire

The paper examines the historical experience of ordering and codifying administrative legislation in the Russian Empire, covering the period from the Petr the Great reforms to the mid-19th century. The author analyzes the principal stages of this process: from early attempts to systematize discrete spheres of governance, such as the Military Statute and the General Regulation, to landmark codificatory instruments, including the Charter of Police Order (Ustav blagochiniya) of Catherine II — regarded as the first comprehensive attempt to systematize police law — and the General Establishment of the Ministries of 1811, which systematized the activities of central executive organs. Attention is paid to the large-scale codification efforts led by M. M. Speransky, which resulted in the creation of the Complete Collection of Laws and the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, wherein administrative-legal norms were given their sectoral consolidation and were allocated to the appropriate volumes. The study separately considers the innovative experience of regional codification exemplified by the Siberian Charter of 1822, which demonstrated the adaptation of general principles of systematization to the specific requirements of governing an extensive territory. The paper also assesses the significance of these multi-stage efforts for the emergence of administrative law as an autonomous branch and for the improvement of the system of state administration in the Russian Empire.

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