The evolution of the institution of surety in the law of Ancient Rus and the feudal republics

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comparative legal analysis of the institution of surety (bail) in the monuments of medieval Russian law: Russkaya Pravda, the Pskov Judicial Charter and the Novgorod Judicial Charter. The methodological basis of the study includes historical-legal and comparative-institutional approaches, as well as elements of the anthropology of law. The author traces the transformation of this institution from public law collective responsibility of the community (verv) to a formalized private law obligation and a procedural guarantee of appearance in court. The study substantiates the thesis that the development of commodity money relations in the north-western republics of Rus led to the displacement of archaic collective responsibility and the formation of individualized legal personality in the law of obligations. The specific features of surety as a measure of credit security in Pskov and as a procedural guarantee in the adversarial process of Novgorod are identified. It is shown that Russian suretyship developed as a universal institution of third party liability, used primarily to secure the interests of authority and only indirectly to protect the rights of private individuals. The author concludes that there are three stages in the evolution of surety: public fiscal (Russkaya Pravda), private law (Pskov Judicial Charter) and procedural (Novgorod Judicial Charter), which reflects the transition from collective to individual legal consciousness.