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Soviet Comrades' Courts, Harold J. Berman, James W. Spindler

Washington Law Review

A major aspect of Soviet criminal law reform since 1959 has been the transfer of certain judicial functions to Comrades' Courts, which are nonprofessional tribunals established to try petty offenses in enterprises, apartment houses, collective farms, universities, and elsewhere. These are called "social," rather than "state," agencies, because they are not staffed by civil servants but by volunteers and because they are conceived to perform a persuasive rather than a coercive function. Apart from their practical importance, they play an important part in symbolizing the theory that in the new period of "expanded construction of communism" there will be a …