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Papers by Michael Antonov
Law. Journal of the Higher School of Economics
Formalism, Decisionism and Conservatism in Russian Law
Journal of Law and Religion
This article analyzes the origins of the concept of symphonia, its historical development, and it... more This article analyzes the origins of the concept of symphonia, its historical development, and its utilization by the Russian Orthodox Church as a normative ideal for church-state relations. In various historical contexts, this concept has referred to different normative requirements; it relied on different paradigms in Byzantium and in medieval Russia and it acquired new meanings in Imperial Russia. The reinterpretations of this concept by the Russian Orthodox Church in order to legitimize its position in the political life of contemporary Russia take this concept far from its original meaning. Using methods from the history of concepts of, among others, Reinhart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner, the author considers how the semantic transformations of symphonia in modern contexts by the Russian Orthodox Church lead to a hollowing of this concept. This conception is hardly reconcilable with the normative logic of the actual Russian political and legal systems.
osteuropa recht
Legal possibilities for historical interpretations in Russia are more flexible than in many other... more Legal possibilities for historical interpretations in Russia are more flexible than in many other post-communist countries. However, this extent of freedom of opinion became an irritating factor for the authoritarian regime in the 2010 s: the freedom to evaluate historical facts is an obstacle for imposing ideology everywhere. Under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, a number of tools were introduced into Russian law to secure the state control in school education. At the international level, Russia started to actively fight against ‘falsifications of history’ and employed a rich arsenal of ideological tools to defend the Soviet interpretation of World War II. In the domestic law as well, new corpuses delicti were introduced in criminal and administrative law to defend the Soviet history from attempted falsifications. This development coincided with the general trend to exceptionalism characterized by the legislation on foreign agents, or restrictive amendments in the anti-extremist...
Law. Journal of the Higher School of Economics
Review of Central and East European Law
This essay examines methodological nuances connected with historical research of Russian law. The... more This essay examines methodological nuances connected with historical research of Russian law. These nuances are studied against the backdrop of two books published respectively by Professor Ferdinand Feldbrugge and Professor William Pomeranz on Russian legal history. The methods employed by these authors reveal specific features of Russian legal language and mentality which can be helpful in explaining the dissimilarities between legal and political developments in Russia and the West. They place particular emphasis on the development of legal language and productively analyze many current issues of Russian law through the lens of history of concepts. These books are evaluated as important contributions to comparative analysis of Russian and Western legal cultures. The key events of Russian legal history are considered in a perspective that sheds light on the current challenges faced by Russian law.
Journal of Law, Religion and State
This paper analyzes the cultural constraints imposed in the Russian legal system by the prevailin... more This paper analyzes the cultural constraints imposed in the Russian legal system by the prevailing social philosophy, which is characterized by a significant degree of religious conservatism and communitarianism. This conservatism is predictably opposed to sexual minorities and to those who want to defend or justify them. The author concludes that this philosophy strongly affects decision-making in Russian courts, and can sometimes overrule the provisions of the Russian Constitution and the laws that formally grant protection to sexual minorities. In turn, this conservative social philosophy and communitarian morality are based on religious patterns that are still shaping the mindsets and attitudes of Russians. These attitudes cannot be ignored by judges and other actors in the Russian legal system, who to some extent are subject to the general perception of what is just, acceptable, and reasonable in society, and are factually bound by this perception.
Proceedings of the Institute of State and Law of the RAS
The present essay is a review of the 2018 book by Professor Cosmin Cercel TowardsaJurisprudenceof... more The present essay is a review of the 2018 book by Professor Cosmin Cercel TowardsaJurisprudenceofStateCommunism.LawandtheFailureofRevolution. In reviewer’s opinion, this book is a good contrast to the books and articles written in the first post-Soviet years in the Central European countries, when the intellectuals glorified the Western ideals and condemned the socialist past of their countries and the ideological legacy of the communist regimes. The focal point of the book under review is to rethink the history of authoritarianism in Romania through analyzing the formalist legal ideology that was utilized by communist regimes for their purposes. In author’s opinion, the ideas of Soviet jurisprudence do not significantly differ from the bourgeois discourse about law that characterizes the modernity. In the perspective of this discourse, the formal and procedural autonomy of legal rules (the regime of legality) is opposed to the substantial exceptions from these rules which are justi...
Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe
The Russian Constitution establishes liberal principles on the exercise of religious freedoms. Ho... more The Russian Constitution establishes liberal principles on the exercise of religious freedoms. However, the Russian statutory law does not provide explicit rules on how to implement these principles and what their limits are. This puts the Russian courts in an ambiguous situation, whereby they have to defend the religious minorities pursuant to the constitutional law, although they are practically precluded from granting accommodations to these minorities, otherwise courts could be viewed as depriving the parliament of its legislative function. Meanwhile, the Russian legislative authorities are reluctant to legitimize such accommodations for the minorities. In this situation, the Russian courts of general jurisdiction in concrete cases decide on the factual limits of the protection and thereby indirectly accept the idea of accommodation, which is not elaborated in the statutory law, providing remedies or limitations on its enforcement. The courts are generally indisposed to recognize that their decisions develops the statutory law and therefore tend to shroud their approaches and the criteria in the formalistic language. This paper examines some of the criteria and approaches that the Russian Supreme Court has formulated in several landmark cases concerning religious freedoms. The author underscores the relevance of such an analysis for the comparative research projects, which aim at understanding (dis)similarities of the legal accommodations on religious grounds in different countries.
Review of Central and East European Law
The present review analyzes the key ideas of Justice Gadzhiev and Judge Posner on legal methodolo... more The present review analyzes the key ideas of Justice Gadzhiev and Judge Posner on legal methodology and tasks in legal education. These ideas are considered in the context of two recent books by these authors. Both books appeared in 2016 and both question certain principal dimensions of pragmatism in the law, to which both Gadzhiev and Posner are subscribed. This review essay examines the links between the respective ideas of these two authors on methods of legal research, on judicial process and on teaching law, in addition to providing an overview of the intellectual culture of the us and Russian legal orders.
Arts and Social Sciences Journal
SSRN Electronic Journal
This paper analyses the cultural constraints that are factually imposed on the actors of the Russ... more This paper analyses the cultural constraints that are factually imposed on the actors of the Russian legal system by the prevailing social philosophy which is characterized by a significant degree of religious conservatism. This conservatism is predictably opposed to sexual minorities and to those who want to defend or justify them. Examining the 2013 amendments on the protection of traditional values and the case law concerning these amendments, along with the discourses of some judges of the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) and other actors, the author concludes that religious conceptions have a strong impact on decision-making in Russian courts, and can sometimes overrule the formal provisions of the Russian Constitution and the laws which grant protection and guarantees to the sexual minorities. This situation can be explained with reference to the prevailing social philosophy which promotes conservative values and emphasises collective interests. The reasons for this specific development of Russian intellectual culture in this regard fall outside the scope of the present paper, but it can be asserted that this development, historically oriented at prioritizing morals and religion over the law, still shapes the general conservative attitudes of Russians toward sexual minorities. These attitudes cannot be ignored by judges and other actors of Russian legal system who, to some extent, are subject to the general perception of what is just, acceptable, and reasonable in the society.
Review of Central and East European Law, 2016
Review of Central and East European Law, 2016
Revista da Faculdade de Direito UFPR, 2015
No presente artigo analisaremos uma das tendências da filosofia jurídica russa que exerce uma inf... more No presente artigo analisaremos uma das tendências da filosofia jurídica russa que exerce uma influência considerável nos atuais processos políticos deste país. Essa tendência manifesta-se no chamado centralismo estatal: uma ideologia segundo a qual o Estado é onipotente e pode interferir em qualquer assunto, sem nenhuma limitação interna ou externa. Essa “ideologia do Leviatã” foi por muitas vezes articulada na filosofia jurídica; para começar, com Platão e Aristóteles, e, na Rússia, encontrou um solo fértil, pois seus territórios devastados, sua população heterogênea e seu ambiente pouco amigável (tanto política quanto naturalmente) deixaram claro para muitos que, sem autoridades centrais fortes, não haverá futuro para esse país tão grande. Em resumo, ou a Rússia ruirá como a Inglaterra, a França e outros impérios, ou precisará se modernizar e se reestruturar de acordo com os modelos de outros grandes países ocidentais (como os EUA). Este artigo foi desenvolvido com base em duas p...
Law. Journal of the Higher School of Economics
Formalism, Decisionism and Conservatism in Russian Law
Journal of Law and Religion
This article analyzes the origins of the concept of symphonia, its historical development, and it... more This article analyzes the origins of the concept of symphonia, its historical development, and its utilization by the Russian Orthodox Church as a normative ideal for church-state relations. In various historical contexts, this concept has referred to different normative requirements; it relied on different paradigms in Byzantium and in medieval Russia and it acquired new meanings in Imperial Russia. The reinterpretations of this concept by the Russian Orthodox Church in order to legitimize its position in the political life of contemporary Russia take this concept far from its original meaning. Using methods from the history of concepts of, among others, Reinhart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner, the author considers how the semantic transformations of symphonia in modern contexts by the Russian Orthodox Church lead to a hollowing of this concept. This conception is hardly reconcilable with the normative logic of the actual Russian political and legal systems.
osteuropa recht
Legal possibilities for historical interpretations in Russia are more flexible than in many other... more Legal possibilities for historical interpretations in Russia are more flexible than in many other post-communist countries. However, this extent of freedom of opinion became an irritating factor for the authoritarian regime in the 2010 s: the freedom to evaluate historical facts is an obstacle for imposing ideology everywhere. Under the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, a number of tools were introduced into Russian law to secure the state control in school education. At the international level, Russia started to actively fight against ‘falsifications of history’ and employed a rich arsenal of ideological tools to defend the Soviet interpretation of World War II. In the domestic law as well, new corpuses delicti were introduced in criminal and administrative law to defend the Soviet history from attempted falsifications. This development coincided with the general trend to exceptionalism characterized by the legislation on foreign agents, or restrictive amendments in the anti-extremist...
Law. Journal of the Higher School of Economics
Review of Central and East European Law
This essay examines methodological nuances connected with historical research of Russian law. The... more This essay examines methodological nuances connected with historical research of Russian law. These nuances are studied against the backdrop of two books published respectively by Professor Ferdinand Feldbrugge and Professor William Pomeranz on Russian legal history. The methods employed by these authors reveal specific features of Russian legal language and mentality which can be helpful in explaining the dissimilarities between legal and political developments in Russia and the West. They place particular emphasis on the development of legal language and productively analyze many current issues of Russian law through the lens of history of concepts. These books are evaluated as important contributions to comparative analysis of Russian and Western legal cultures. The key events of Russian legal history are considered in a perspective that sheds light on the current challenges faced by Russian law.
Journal of Law, Religion and State
This paper analyzes the cultural constraints imposed in the Russian legal system by the prevailin... more This paper analyzes the cultural constraints imposed in the Russian legal system by the prevailing social philosophy, which is characterized by a significant degree of religious conservatism and communitarianism. This conservatism is predictably opposed to sexual minorities and to those who want to defend or justify them. The author concludes that this philosophy strongly affects decision-making in Russian courts, and can sometimes overrule the provisions of the Russian Constitution and the laws that formally grant protection to sexual minorities. In turn, this conservative social philosophy and communitarian morality are based on religious patterns that are still shaping the mindsets and attitudes of Russians. These attitudes cannot be ignored by judges and other actors in the Russian legal system, who to some extent are subject to the general perception of what is just, acceptable, and reasonable in society, and are factually bound by this perception.
Proceedings of the Institute of State and Law of the RAS
The present essay is a review of the 2018 book by Professor Cosmin Cercel TowardsaJurisprudenceof... more The present essay is a review of the 2018 book by Professor Cosmin Cercel TowardsaJurisprudenceofStateCommunism.LawandtheFailureofRevolution. In reviewer’s opinion, this book is a good contrast to the books and articles written in the first post-Soviet years in the Central European countries, when the intellectuals glorified the Western ideals and condemned the socialist past of their countries and the ideological legacy of the communist regimes. The focal point of the book under review is to rethink the history of authoritarianism in Romania through analyzing the formalist legal ideology that was utilized by communist regimes for their purposes. In author’s opinion, the ideas of Soviet jurisprudence do not significantly differ from the bourgeois discourse about law that characterizes the modernity. In the perspective of this discourse, the formal and procedural autonomy of legal rules (the regime of legality) is opposed to the substantial exceptions from these rules which are justi...
Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe
The Russian Constitution establishes liberal principles on the exercise of religious freedoms. Ho... more The Russian Constitution establishes liberal principles on the exercise of religious freedoms. However, the Russian statutory law does not provide explicit rules on how to implement these principles and what their limits are. This puts the Russian courts in an ambiguous situation, whereby they have to defend the religious minorities pursuant to the constitutional law, although they are practically precluded from granting accommodations to these minorities, otherwise courts could be viewed as depriving the parliament of its legislative function. Meanwhile, the Russian legislative authorities are reluctant to legitimize such accommodations for the minorities. In this situation, the Russian courts of general jurisdiction in concrete cases decide on the factual limits of the protection and thereby indirectly accept the idea of accommodation, which is not elaborated in the statutory law, providing remedies or limitations on its enforcement. The courts are generally indisposed to recognize that their decisions develops the statutory law and therefore tend to shroud their approaches and the criteria in the formalistic language. This paper examines some of the criteria and approaches that the Russian Supreme Court has formulated in several landmark cases concerning religious freedoms. The author underscores the relevance of such an analysis for the comparative research projects, which aim at understanding (dis)similarities of the legal accommodations on religious grounds in different countries.
Review of Central and East European Law
The present review analyzes the key ideas of Justice Gadzhiev and Judge Posner on legal methodolo... more The present review analyzes the key ideas of Justice Gadzhiev and Judge Posner on legal methodology and tasks in legal education. These ideas are considered in the context of two recent books by these authors. Both books appeared in 2016 and both question certain principal dimensions of pragmatism in the law, to which both Gadzhiev and Posner are subscribed. This review essay examines the links between the respective ideas of these two authors on methods of legal research, on judicial process and on teaching law, in addition to providing an overview of the intellectual culture of the us and Russian legal orders.
Arts and Social Sciences Journal
SSRN Electronic Journal
This paper analyses the cultural constraints that are factually imposed on the actors of the Russ... more This paper analyses the cultural constraints that are factually imposed on the actors of the Russian legal system by the prevailing social philosophy which is characterized by a significant degree of religious conservatism. This conservatism is predictably opposed to sexual minorities and to those who want to defend or justify them. Examining the 2013 amendments on the protection of traditional values and the case law concerning these amendments, along with the discourses of some judges of the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) and other actors, the author concludes that religious conceptions have a strong impact on decision-making in Russian courts, and can sometimes overrule the formal provisions of the Russian Constitution and the laws which grant protection and guarantees to the sexual minorities. This situation can be explained with reference to the prevailing social philosophy which promotes conservative values and emphasises collective interests. The reasons for this specific development of Russian intellectual culture in this regard fall outside the scope of the present paper, but it can be asserted that this development, historically oriented at prioritizing morals and religion over the law, still shapes the general conservative attitudes of Russians toward sexual minorities. These attitudes cannot be ignored by judges and other actors of Russian legal system who, to some extent, are subject to the general perception of what is just, acceptable, and reasonable in the society.
Review of Central and East European Law, 2016
Review of Central and East European Law, 2016
Revista da Faculdade de Direito UFPR, 2015
No presente artigo analisaremos uma das tendências da filosofia jurídica russa que exerce uma inf... more No presente artigo analisaremos uma das tendências da filosofia jurídica russa que exerce uma influência considerável nos atuais processos políticos deste país. Essa tendência manifesta-se no chamado centralismo estatal: uma ideologia segundo a qual o Estado é onipotente e pode interferir em qualquer assunto, sem nenhuma limitação interna ou externa. Essa “ideologia do Leviatã” foi por muitas vezes articulada na filosofia jurídica; para começar, com Platão e Aristóteles, e, na Rússia, encontrou um solo fértil, pois seus territórios devastados, sua população heterogênea e seu ambiente pouco amigável (tanto política quanto naturalmente) deixaram claro para muitos que, sem autoridades centrais fortes, não haverá futuro para esse país tão grande. Em resumo, ou a Rússia ruirá como a Inglaterra, a França e outros impérios, ou precisará se modernizar e se reestruturar de acordo com os modelos de outros grandes países ocidentais (como os EUA). Este artigo foi desenvolvido com base em duas p...