Development of the Economic and Legal Concepts of Financial Instruments in the PreRevolutionary Period. G.F. Shershenevich’s Contribution

Abstract

Many experts believe that we are on the cusp of a new system of legal understanding, construction, and formalization, as well as state regulation of the relations and processes governed by “financial instruments”. However, this term remains polysemantic and thus is a compelling subject for the discourse. It has multiple legal interpretations, uncertain legal applications, and diverse or even conflicting theoretical frameworks. In this article, the historical ideas of the pre-revolutionary Russian scholars were discussed in connection with the current legal understanding of financial instruments. The analyzed works certainly contain brilliant thoughts, logical reasoning, generalizations of the foreign experiences, and novel ideas. They all became the basis for the law and legislation development in subsequent periods, up to the present day. Special attention was paid to the legal heritage of G.F. Shershenevich, a prominent figure of classical Russian jurisprudence who worked at Kazan University. It was concluded that the scholar’s views reflected both a narrow understanding of private law and a more complex approach that links the legal manifestations of phenomena with their social, economic, and commercial essence. The results obtained show that the principles of current economic and legal models can be traced back to the conceptual aspects of the categories (such as financial instruments) introduced by the earlier scholars.