Introduction to Business Law in Russia

Vladimir Orlov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317113287
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of business law in Russia. It presents an introduction to the Russian legal system in general before going on to provide a thorough analysis of the key aspects such as regulation, taxation, competition, contracts, intellectual property law, among many others. Where appropriate, cases and international comparisons are included to help illustrate the practical workings of this complex system. The book will be an invaluable guide for students, researchers and practitioners who want a clear understanding of legislation relating to business in contemporary Russia.

Chapter 1
Features of Russian Law

1 Historical Background and Influences

Business law is in general understood as the legal norms regulating enterprise activities, whereas these activities in fact also comprehend the production of products, the performance of works, and the provision of services and transactions subsidiary to them. Business law also concerns personal noncommercial relations relating to business activities as well as state regulation purposed to protect public interests.1

The concept of profit-oriented enterprise is expressly enshrined in Russian law.2 It is a direct reflection of the attempt to continue societal modernization by resorting to market-economy thinking based on the Western model3 and to discard the socialist economy of the Soviet period when economic activities were based on the principle of planning.4 Socialist planning was developed to extremes in the Soviet Union, and the concept of Soviet economic law5 corresponded to it, and this has not yet been fully abandoned in the present Russian law. Hence the concept of economic law is still used alongside a concept of business or commercial law that stresses the regulation of private law. In so far as it stresses the importance of public regulation, economic law is regarded as forming its own branch of law, consolidating the norms of administrative and civil law.6

The generally accepted notion is that business law, as commercial legislation, forms the entity of general and special civil law norms. The characteristic feature of civil law regulation is that the parties participating in the relations subject to it are legally equal. Within the scope of application of business law norms which belong to the civil law are the legal relations of persons practicing enterprise activities, including direct relations between entrepreneurs (enterprises) as well as those in which at least one party is an entrepreneur (enterprise).7 Connected with this concept of business law is also the concept of business law as a legal discipline. In this sense business law as a discipline of studies handles specific features of the public and private law regulation of legal relations related to the practice of enterprise activities including the public organization of these.8 In that case the scope of consideration includes norms of labor and land as well as administration, finance, tax, and other public law.

Civil law regulation, which covers the main part of the regulation of enterprise activities, was renewed in Russia by its total codification. The purpose of this was to establish new legal conditions for entrepreneurship by strengthening private law regulation. The present Civil Code,9 composed of four parts, contains all the important civil law rules. Thus, all essential legal rules including definitions and principles can be found in the same statute. Moreover, within the Civil Code the whole body of civil law norms constitutes a solid, methodically structured, logical system of concepts and rules, which is divided into a general part (including basic concepts, principles, and rules) and a special part (including exceptions to, and specifications of, the general rules).10 In this way, Russian civil law has achieved a relatively good consistency, which means logical (formal dogmatic) uncontradictoriness between legal norms, as well as coherency, which stands for the contentual congruence of the law.11

Russian law is grounded in the Roman law tradition.12 Russian civil law especially is rooted mainly in the Roman–German legal tradition, in which the primary legal source is written law and the legislation is mainly codified. Above all, the roots of the modern civil law of Russia are substantially in Roman–German law, which was influenced by Roman law, and the historical school has had a dominant position in Russian (and, in principle also, Soviet) legal thinking.13 German civil law influenced the development of Russian law mostly at the time when the doctrine of conceptual jurisprudence (Begriffsjurisprudenz) developed in the circle of the historical school. In particular, Russian civil law has been influenced by the German Pandekt law doctrine. According to this the legal acts and doctrines of different legal disciplines are divided into a general and a special part.14 However, while its roots are mainly in German law and, through this, in Roman law, Russian civil law should be regarded as relatively original. The explanation for this lies in societal and cultural differences.15 That said, there are also signs of the influence of Anglo-Saxon common law.16 17

Russian civil law is extensively codified, and written law, in which form not only proper legal rules but also abstract general concepts and general principles are shaped, holds a very strong position.18 As to praxis and doctrine, they are not (at least officially) regarded as legal sources in Russian law. However, the role of the supreme judicial bodies—the Supreme Court19 and Supreme Arbitrazh Court20—has grown recently in Russia, and their decisions, particularly where they have handed down guiding explanations or interpretive instructions concerning judicial practice, contained in plenum decrees,21 are followed by the lower courts. These decisions are normative by their nature and thus have a certain generality and binding force.22 There are also signs that the decisions of the supreme judicial bodies are being recognized as legal sources.23 24 One of the reasons for this change in attitude is the important role of Russian courts in verifying the legality of normative acts: if such an act is found to be illegal, it is vacated by the court.25 Particularly important are the normative explanations of the Constitutional Court26 concerning constitutional issues, which are definitive in the Russian legal system. In any case, the role of precedents has grown in Russia, especially in respect of the practice of the Constitutional Court27 and Supreme Arbitrazh Court. As a matter of fact, precedent is an integral component of Russian law.28 The Russian legal system is well acquainted with precedents of interpretatio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Features of Russian Law
• 2 Enterprise and Company Law
• 3 Tax Law
• 4 Competition Law
• 5 Contract Law
• 6 Intellectual Property Law
• 7 Regulation of Foreign Trade Transactions
• Index