The paper is devoted to the 250th anniversary of the outstanding statesman of Russia Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky. The authors set the task in a short essay to combine the analysis of state, legal and stylistic aspects of the reformer’s activities. A special feature of the research methodology is the combination of studying the essence and results of Speransky’s program of state reforms with the ideological struggle around liberal and conservative alternatives to the development of Russia; an attempt at ideological identification of Russian statehood and the rule of law of the 19th century. The conclusion is made about the significant role of Speransky in the formation of the foundations of Russian constitutionalism, in the development of conceptual ideas about the constitutional order of the activities of the highest state authorities. The paper examines Speransky’s key approaches to the systematization of Russian law. It is concluded that at the beginning of the 19th century Russian legal architecture has been identified based on the historical experience of the Russian incorporation of the 16th–17th centuries. The priority way of its development means continuous incorporation, the continuous implementation of new norms unfolding over time into the fundamental structural matrix. Speransky showed     that law is a unity of a suprasystem nature that goes far beyond the limits of individual normative complexes. The paper elucidates the tasks of a new stage in the development of modern Russian legislation in the context of systematization of Russian law in the first half of the 19th century. It is concluded that the nature of the Russian legal form means legal constructivism that allows creating and regulating social relations of a complex nature rather than universalism of sectoral codifications. The analysis of the legal aspects of Speransky’s state activity is carried out in close connection with the characteristic style of his analytical work. It is concluded that Speransky acted as a statesman of a new type, whose personality was commensurate with the challenges and trends of the development of Russian statehood in Modern times.

The paper is devoted the problem of protecting the business reputation of legal entities in Russia and in foreign countries. The author elucidates various approaches to the definition and protection of business reputation and the possibility of compensation for moral harm caused to legal entities. The paper provides examples from the legislation and judicial practice of various countries, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil and China. The legislation of the EAEU and BRICS member states differs in approaches to protecting the business reputation of legal entities. In some countries, such as Armenia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, legal entities are not granted the right to compensation for moral damage, but they can demand refutation of defamatory information and compensation for damages. In Kyrgyzstan and Brazil, legal entities can claim compensation for moral damage. In China, the reputation of legal entities is protected on an equal basis with individuals, while taking into account public interests.     

Effective criminal law measures to counter organized crime should be based on an adequate understanding of this phenomenon and should comply With the principles, approaches and traditions of the national legal system. The disposition of the article 210.1 «Occupying the highest position in the criminal hierarchy» introduced in the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is excessively concise and does not correspond to the fundamental principle of legal certainty of criminal law norms. Despite the declared successes in its application, the practice of judicial review of criminal cases of crimes is ambiguous. In addition, the conviction of a «thief-in-law» («criminal lord») and his incarceration does not deprive him of either a criminal «title» or real power in the criminal world. The low effectiveness of criminal law measures is explained by the fact that the «thieves’ world» and its criminal hierarchy headed by «thieves-in-law» are neither a criminal community (criminal organization), nor an organized group or any other form of complicity listed in Article 35 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. It is proposed, having eliminated terminological redundancy, to call it a criminal community, in contrast to the forms of complicity provided for in Part 4 of Article 35 and Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation that are more correctly called criminal organizations. The paper defines a criminal community in its new understanding, and proposes a set of criminalized acts to effectively counter this phenomenon.

The paper examines the issues of effectiveness and viability of the modern Russian institution of prosecutor’s refusal to bring charges. The author substantiates the conclusion that it is formed to a greater extent in the spirit of Anglo-Saxon legal logic, while neither normative nor doctrinal correlation with the basic principles of domestic criminal proceedings has been implemented. The legal institution in question is a vivid example of conceptual, axiological legal contradictions in the Russian criminal process, which makes it difficult to clearly define its modern model and the vector of its further development. For methodological purposes, the modern Russian institution of the prosecutor’s refusal to charge was analyzed in relation to the trial with the participation of jurors. This made it possible to more fully identify the relevant shortcomings and identify areas for improvement. As a result, the following conclusions were substantiated: it would be advisable to deprive the prosecutor’s refusal to bring charges of binding force for the Russian court. At the same time, the adversarial foundation of the trial is not limited here in any way, since the prosecutor should have the opportunity to convey his position to the court following the results of the judicial investigation. In general, the proposed approach will act as a reliable guarantee of the rights of the victim, including access to justice, and serve to ensure the constitutional right of Russians to participate in the administration of justice, strengthen the independence and completeness of the judiciary. As a result, using the example of the institute under study, we can talk about the need to return to the authenticity of Russian criminal proceedings in the spirit of continental legal traditions.

Public danger is a fundamental category of criminal law that defines its essence and social purpose. At   the same time, science has not yet developed a unified view on the nature of public danger, its place and role in the structure of criminal law knowledge and law enforcement. In particular, the following questions remain unresolved: the legal boundaries of public danger, the correlation of the principle of legality with the social foundations of criminal liability, the correlation of the concept of harm with public danger, the possibility of its objective cognition, the impact on the assessment of public danger of acts of social values and personality, determining the quality of a crime. The paper analyzes the phenomenology of social perception of public danger in the aspect of law enforcement assessments of real harm. For this purpose, dialectics is used in the categories of reality and possibility. Harm is considered as a category of reality, and public danger as a category of opportunity. At the same time, the author understands harm and public danger not in a universal, but in a legal sense. The essence of harm means an encroachment on social values and a response to it from society and the state — a moral rebuke of the act, elevating it to the degree of social threat (danger). The public danger of a crime is constructed by the legislator, therefore this property (public danger) is associated with the reality of harm and is an important and necessary criminal law construct filled with real social meaning.  The modern problem, actualized by the security paradigm, is the definition of moral criteria for the validity of socially dangerous harm. 

The greatest attention to the lack of consent to sexual intercourse as a mandatory feature of rape is paid under the US criminal law. This issue is closely related to the main changes in US state legislation that have occurred as a result of a departure from the traditional understanding of rape as a crime. There are three approaches to understanding the term «consent» in doctrine and legislation, namely, «no means no», «yes means yes» and a negotiation model. Each model imposes features on the process of establishing the fault of the subject and the rapist’s possible error in consent. Difficulties arise when the subject and the victim are intoxicated. Based on the experience of the United States, recommendations are formulated that are useful for the Russian legislator and law enforcement officer. It is not necessary to consolidate any model of consent to sexual intercourse in the criminal law, as well as to abandon signs of the use of violence, the threat of its use or the use of the helpless state of the victim. It is required to distinguish harassment and overcoming the will of the victim, to assess the silence of the victim, victim’s words and actions, finding out whether the victim’s will was distorted. A woman has the right to withdraw her consent after sexual intercourse starts, in which case, if there are other signs of a crime, the   continuation of sexual intercourse against the will of the victim is qualified as rape.

The paper examines the confidentiality of genomic data. According to the author, genomic data is a special concept in the field of personal data and requires increased regulatory guarantees of legal protection   and safeguards. In addition, the author considers the issue of the grounds for disclosure and use of this type of information. According to the researcher, this is possible only if there is a public interest in conducting scientific research that contributes to the implementation of the health function by the state. The right to science, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, can serve as a regulatory basis for this. The author notes   that this right has not yet been established at the level of national legislation, which significantly complicates its understanding and definition of restrictions in its implementation. The paper also emphasizes the uniqueness of genomic information, which is characterized by features of identifiability and relative danger. These features are specified by the author in terms of the purpose and scope of the use of genetic data, their informational content, as well as the degree of their influence on the rights of the relevant person. In conclusion, the author puts forward am idea of one best way to balance the right to science and genomic data privacy, through which it will be possible to ensure both effective legal protection and a stable course of scientific evolution and progress. 

Philosophical and legal thought knows a number of theoretical concepts devoted to a grandiose and   organic ethical and legal synthesis — the supreme unity of ethics and jurisprudence or reasoning about what is essential for law, supplemented by reasoning about what law should be. The joint task of these disciplines is to find and theoretically describe the best criteria available to the human mind for evaluating human actions. This principle of practical reasonableness, despite its incompleteness and relativity (for everything derived from man bears the signature of its own creator), would serve as a possible foundation stone for humanity in determining   and understanding the highest criterion for evaluating proper behavior that only exists in the world. These are divine laws and prescriptions of their norms, this highest link in any normative hierarchy. It is the divine mind, and not the mind of mortal beings, that is the true source of any duties, from the appeal to the content of which it is possible, resorting to a suitable ethical interpretation, to «deduce» (not directly, but from the «image» that the specified content acquired through human mental activity) all other forms of obligation in one or another normative system. A striking example of such a «normative» concept turns out to be the teaching of J. Austin, devoted, if we put aside the positivist or «command» theory of the author, to the basic principles of the relationship between law (including morality) and the laws of God, ultimately to the sphere of human moral forces and freedom. 

The formation and development of comrades’ justice in the Soviet period of Russian statehood is associated with the implementation of the unified national concept of the court, conditioned not so much by professional justice as by the mass participation of non-professional judges from the people in court. The jurisdiction of cases heard in public courts was regulated by the relevant provisions and criminal codes, providing that these courts considered minor crimes, both by virtue of a direct indication in the law, and by way of delegation of the function of justice by the courts or the prosecutor’s office in each specific case. The activities of the comrades’ courts are divided into three periods. The first period — from 1919 to 1922 — is characterized by the disciplinary orientation of the comrades’ courts authorized to consider all violations of labor legislation. The second period — from 1928 to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War — is characterized by a variety of     comrades’ and public courts that covered various spheres of economic, social and political activities, from Soviet enterprises and institutions to collective farms. Its main purpose was to free public courts from a mass of minor offenses and property disputes, as well as ensuring productivity growth and combating disruptors of production in enterprises and institutions. The third period — from the late 1950s to 1991 — set the goal of strengthening socialist democracy by involving a wide range of workers in the management of public affairs, including through comradely justice, which defined comrades’ courts as quasi-judicial bodies of public and state power, intrinsically inscribed in the concept of a socialist national state.

Special collegiums operated in 1934–1938 as part of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the supreme courts of the Union republics, regional and regional courts, and the main courts of the autonomous republics. Their creation can be considered as an experiment in transferring cases of state crimes from non-curial to judicial authorities. The special collegiums activities were provided by the NKVD, special departments of the prosecutor’s office and the sector of special courts of the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR. Their personnel consisted of former NKVD officers and nominees of local justice authorities. All this makes it possible to characterize them as bodies of special justice. The most notable cases considered by special collegiums were cases of anti-Soviet agitation (Article 58–10 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), cases under the decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR dated August 07, 1932 («The Law on  Three Spikelets») and cases of banditry (Article 59-3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). All of them were considered within the framework of the campaign justice model. It was characterized by an expansion and narrowing of the interpretation of the norms of substantive law. This allowed ordinary crimes and administrative offenses to be considered as state crimes. The penalties were regulated. This led to unstable judicial practice. The methods of «simplification», i.e., deviations from the norms of substantive and procedural law, were actively used. Obviously, by the middle of 1938, the experiment of depriving non-judicial bodies of judicial functions was considered unsuccessful and the special collegiums were liquidated.

The paper is a brief overview of the international conference «Transport Obligations in the context of Technological Development» held on June 18, 2024 at Department of Civil Law of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL) and dedicated to the memory of Professor A.G. Kalpin. More than 30 speakers—representatives of leading Russian universities, business and government authorities—attended the conference. The conference was supported by the Digital Valleys Platform Foundation for the Support and Development of Information Technologies and Digitalization of the Economy, which is the general partner of the Technopravo project implemented within the framework of the Priority-2030 academic equality program. Four out of five Dr. Sci.— experts in transport law — attended the conference. The paper provides an overview of the main speeches and reports of leading Russian lawyers on transport law in the Russian Federation. Following the results of the conference, it was emphasized that many problems of transport law identified by Professor A. G. Kalpin have not yet been solved. This circumstance, as well as the rapid technological development of the Russian Federation, necessitates the continued modernization of domestic legislation in the field of transport law, including the formation of new legal regimes in the transport industry of the Russian Federation.