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ON THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL PROCEDURE IN RUSSIAN LAW IN THE 9TH–15TH CENTURIES
HISTORY OF THE CIVIL PROCEDURE
V.G. MEDVEDEV, D.A. LIPINSKY
V.G. MEDVEDEV,
Doctor of Legal Sciences, Professor,
Department of Theory and History of State and Law,
Togliatti State University
D.A. LIPINSKY,
Doctor of Legal Sciences, Professor,
Department of Theory and History of State and Law,
Togliatti State University
The article reveals the issues of the formation and development of civil procedure law in
medieval Russia on the basis of various historical and legal sources and the works of Russian,
Soviet and modern scientists. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that this problem
remains insufficiently investigated to date due to the small number of works devoted
directly to the civil process in the Old Russian state and Northwestern Russia during the
period of feudal fragmentation. The novelty of the study is associated with the identification
of some new features of civil proceedings and a new interpretation of existing provisions.
The methodology used in the course of the study includes dialectical, comparative-historical,
formal, logical and hermeneutic methods that allowed us to consider the formation of
civil procedure law in its development and its relationship with the phenomena of socioeconomic
life, compare historical and legal sources of various periods of medieval statehood,
analyze these sources and interpret them. In the course of the study, it was revealed that
the formation of civil proceedings was closely connected with the judicial system of Ancient
Russia, Novgorod and Pskov. It is determined that, despite the unity of the criminal and
civil proceedings in the Kievan state, some differences have already been observed in them.
The procedural legal capacity of participants in civil proceedings in Kiev and North-Western
Russia has been established. The duality of the judicial system and the separate jurisdiction
of the princely and republican judicial bodies in Novgorod and Pskov were revealed
and new stages of civil proceedings were established. Conclusions: in Ancient Russia, due
to the underdevelopment of commodity-money relations, only the beginnings of the formation
of judicial power and civil proceedings were observed. During the period of feudal
fragmentation in economically developed Novgorod and Pskov, the judicial system and civil
procedure law received significant development. Along with the immutability of the principle
of the adversarial process, many new provisions have appeared in it. Women, elderly
people and children were given the right to present their representatives at the trial, there
were rules on the public summoning of the defendant to court, the process became closed,
oral clerical work was replaced by written, the evidence base expanded due to a judicial
duel and written evidence.
Keywords: history of civil procedure; Russian Truth; historiography of the problem; civil
procedure in the period of feudal fragmentation; evolution of civil justice; legal proceedings
in Novgorod; legal proceedings in Pskov
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Information about the author
V.G. Medvedev (Togliatti, Russia) – Doctor of Legal Sciences, Professor, Department
of Theory and History of State and Law, Togliatti State University (14 Belorusskaia St., Togliatti,
445020, Russia; e-mail: [email protected]).
D.A. Lipinsky (Togliatti, Russia) – Doctor of Legal Sciences, Professor, Department
of Theory and History of State and Law, Togliatti State University (14 Belorusskaia
St., Togliatti, 445020, Russia; e-mail: Dmitri82yandex.ru).
Recommended citation
Medvedev V.G., Lipinsky D.A. K voprosu o stanovlenii i razvitii grazhdanskogo protsessa
v russkom prave IX–XV vv. [On the Formation and Development of Civil Procedure in
Russian Law in the 9th–15th Centuries]. Vestnik grazhdanskogo protsessa – Herald of Civil
Procedure, 2022, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 158–188. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.24031/2226-
0781-2022-12-1-158-188
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