14 - Former Soviet States of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia

Summary

The laws of the countries that emerged on the territory of the former Soviet Union show profound similarities due to a number of shared historical experiences. They have all been parts of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and have all gone, simultaneously albeit not uniformly, down the thorny path of post-socialist transition. The resulting common legacies concern deep-lying features of legal method as well as central structures of substantive law. The codification movement, institutional design, way of functioning and the role of the judiciary, and the extent of the professionalisation of law and the flaws of legal academia as well as the current state of property law and the law of legal persons provide prime examples. Disregarding these continuities results in distorted images based, in particular, on overemphasised formal similarities to the civil law family. Therefore, joint consideration of the formerly Soviet, but also formerly tsarist and formerly post-Soviet countries, remains an indispensable tool of legal comparison.