Law and Justice in Post-Soviet Russia: Strategies of Constitutional Modernization

Abstract

The relationships between notions of law and justice – the central argument in political debates of transition periods. The law is defined in contemporary political science as a special form of social organization which represents itself as a value, norm and fact. The complex interpretation of law as a multidimensional phenomenon is possible only if these three competing parameters are taken into consideration. Another side of the problem is the definition of justice as an ideal, norm or historical tradition. Our purpose in this article is to reconstruct on the basis of cognitive and information theory approach some basic parameters of law and justice in the process of searching solutions for fundamental problems of transitional Post-Soviet period. Among them are: the conflict of law and justice in current Russian political reality; social equality and new property relations; national identity and system of government; the form of government and the type of political regime; legitimacy and legality of political transformation; effectiveness of law. The establishment of a new constitutional order is simultaneously the result and the main premise of this transformation. At the focus of our approach is the comparison between conservative, liberal and pragmatic strategies of legal and constitutional transformation.