Soviet Legal Innovation and the Law of the Western World

The government of Soviet Russia wrote new laws for Russia that were as revolutionary as its political philosophy. These new laws challenged social relations as they had developed in Europe over centuries. These laws generated intense interest in the West. To some, they were the harbinger of what should be done in the West, hence a source for emulation. To others, they represented a threat to the existing order. Western governments, like that of the Tsar, might be at risk if they held to the old ways. Throughout the twentieth century Western governments remade their legal systems, incorporating an astonishing number of laws that mirrored the new Soviet laws. Western law became radically transformed over the course of the twentieth century, largely in the direction of change that had been charted by the government of Soviet Russia.

Part I. The Soviet Challenge: 1. The industrial revolution and the law; 2. Economic needs as legal rights; 3. Equality in the family; 4. Children and the law; 5. Crime without punishment; 6. A call to 'struggling people'; 7. The withering away of law; Part II. Accommodation in the West: 8. Panic in the palace; 9. Enter the working class; 10. Social welfare rights; 11. The state and the economy; 12. Equality comes to the family; 13. Child-bearing and rights of children; 14. Racial equality; 15. Crime and punishment; Part III. The Bourgeois International Order: 16. Equality of nations; 17. The end of colonies; 18. The criminality of war; 19. Protecting sovereignty; 20. Military intervention; Part IV. Law beyond the Cold War: 21. Triumph of capitalist law?; 22. The moorings of Western law; 23. The impact of change.