Legal System of Kazakhstan in the Horde Period

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of the historical aspect of the formation and development of justice in modern Kazakhstan, i.e. from the time when Genghis Khan established the Great tribal state throughout the vast territories from the Yellow to the Black sea. The choice of the topic is due to the lack of modern dissertation researches devoted to the history of formation and development of justice, chronologically sequential periodization covering the co-evolution phase of the research subject that must include the Mongol and Golden Horde period. Differences in historiography and misconceptions about the way of life of nomads also led to the choice of the research topic. The paper shows the similarities and differences of some features of the court procedure at the co-evolutionary and modern stages of development of statehood.The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that in the context of the presidential programs «Modern state for all» and «Spiritual revival», focused on the revival of spiritual values of Kazakhstan, the study of justice in the Mongolian and Horde period is important for improving the efficiency of the modern judicial system. The theoretical and practical significance of the work is that it describes the legal views, legal culture, legal system of two ethnically close modern states, namely Mongolia and Kazakhstan based on a deep comparative analysis of written and historical versions.According to the results of the study, the author comes to the following conclusions. First, the author connects the loss of the role of customary law in the regulation of social relations with the process of Kazakh-Russian integration and the adoption of the law of the Russian Empire, not the norms of the Mohammedan doctrine. Secondly, in the author’s opinion, the legal field of the Mongolian and Horde period covers a variety of rules governing social relations in the early feudal state. Thirdly, the author considers that during the period under consideration there were no clear criteria differentiating the categories «law» and «legislation». Fourth, according to the author, a mixture of functions of the legislative, executive and judicial authorities characterizes the legal system of modern Kazakhstan, which is the successor of the Golden Horde.