Schedrina, Y.V. Issues of guarantees of independence of judges in the process of drafting of the Law “On the Reform of Local Court” of 1912

Abstract: The object of studies concerns the norms of the draft law (later the adopted law) “On Reform of Local Court” , regulating the guarantees of independence of the justices of peace and volost judges in Russia. The author studied the process of evolution of views of the legislator on the complex of guarantees of independence of judges, such as special procedure for the formation of the judicial corpus, irremovability of judges, independence of the court from the administration, high standards of material guarantees of judges. The author studies the governmental discussion regarding the issue of keeping the volost courts and their further reforms. In the process of studies the author applied the following study methods: comparative historical studies, comparative legal studies, historical typological, chronological and others. It is noted that in 1905 the problems regarding functioning of the local justice made the government return to the idea of liquidation of volost courts and restoration of the justices of peace according to the model of 1864. However, the cadres, financial and ideological issues made the legislators leave the drastic measures aside, and just reorganize the volost court. In the process of drafting a new law, the legislators took into consideration a number of mistakes regarding guarantees of independence of judges. However, many problems remained unsolved. For example, the justices of peace remained dependent upon the county assembly, the procedure of bringing judges to disciplinary responsibility was not reformed, the amount of monthly fees of volost judges could not be a sufficient guarantee of their independence, etc. Some of these issues were meant to be resolved in the future, which did not happed because of the events of the 1917.

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