First Attempts to Systematize Russian Legislation and the Creation of the Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire (Svod zakonov Rossiyskoy Imperii)

Abstract

The article is devoted to an event that took place 185 years ago: In 1832, the Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire was published, and on January 19,1833, at the general meeting of the State Council it was approved as an official collection of the acting legislative acts, and it was declared to come int force on January 1,1835. The significance and role of the Digest in the development of the system of Russian legislation have been scrutinised many works. This article analyzes 130 years of experience in setting up commissions dealing with laws collection and reveals the reasons why work in this direction turned out to be unproductive. The accumulated array of laws was partially duplicated, contained errors and inaccuracies. Thus, the collection of laws failed to achieve the desired goal. It was necessary to harmonize and systematize the laws, and that could be done only on the basis of clear ideas concerning the essence of current law and the relations regulated by law. A new stage in the history of the development of domestic law was marked by the work done by Mikhail M. Speransky, under whose leadership the Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire that became a means of enforcing rule of law in the state was created.