The Development of the Norms and Institutions of Criminal Law in the Transcaucasia Region at the Beginning of the 19th Century

Abstract

The authors study the development of criminal law in the Transcaucasia region of the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, and discuss the political and legal significance of the accession of Transcaucasia to the Russian Empire. The normative basis of the research is various agreements of the Russian Empire, including agreements with the Khanates of Northern Azerbaijan, the acts of the supreme power —decrees, manifests and instructions, as well as the corresponding narrative materials. The methodological basis of this research is the general dialectic method of scientific cognition, the methods of empirical and theoretical character: description, formalization, comparison, analysis, generalization, deduction and induction, hypothesis, as well as the special legal methods: formal legal, comparative legal. Research results made it possible to prove that, before Transcaucasia joined the Russian Empire, social relationships in the region, including criminal law ones, were regulated by both written and common law, and that state and political changes lead to changes in criminal legislation throughout the whole history. When Transcaucasia, which has a multi-national and multi-confessional population, joined the Russian Empire, the central government faced the task of working out a special criminal law policy of protecting the society from criminal infringements, as well as some other goals and tasks in this area. The authors determine the degree to which the borderland policy of the state influenced the development of the borderland criminal policy, describe legal acts that enacted changes in the criminal legislation. Special attention is paid to describing the institutions of criminal law that underwent changes though the participation of the state in this process; specifics of the goals and tasks of government coercion, as well as the general basics of sentencing are evaluated. The conducted analysis of the contents of historical legal acts allowed the authors to conclude that, after joining the Russian Empire, the essential tasks of the criminal law of Transcaucasia were, for the first time, formulated at the normative level, including such tasks as crime prevention and the protection of individuals and public safety from criminal infringements. The fundamental principles of humanism and justice, different from the previously dominant ones, were established in the criminal law.