Socialist Law - Characteristic Traits

Characteristic Traits

Socialist law is similar to common law or civil law but with a greatly increased public law sector and decreased private law sector.

• partial or total expulsion of the former ruling classes from the public life at early stages of existence of each socialist state; however, in all socialist states this policy gradually changed into the policy of "one socialist nation without classes"
• diversity of political views directly discouraged.
• the ruling Communist party was eventually subject to prosecution through party committees in first place.
• abolition of private property considered as a primary goal of socialism, if not its defining characteristic, thus near total collectivization and nationalization of the means of production;
• low respect for privacy, extensive control of the party over private life;
• low respect for intellectual property as knowledge and culture was considered a right for human kind, and not a privilege as in the free market economies.
• extensive social warrants of the state (the rights to a job, free education, free healthcare, retirement at 60 for men and 55 for women, maternity leave, free disability benefits and sick leave compensation, subsidies to multichildren families, ...) in return for a high degree of social mobilization.
• the judicial process lacks adversary character; public prosecution is considered as "provider of justice."

A specific institution characteristic to Socialist law was the so-called burlaw court (or, verbally, "court of comrades", Russian товарищеский суд) which decided on minor offences.