The level of legal nihilism is growing – experts of FBK Economic club

November 27, 2012 in Moscow there was held the meeting of FBK Economic club «Legislative acts against law: how it`s done in Russia». The experts have analyzed the recently adopted laws and amendments and made unpromising diagnosis. Alexander Ermolenko, FBK partner, head of the corporate practice «FBK Legal» having opened the meeting has emphasized the recent trends: : the quality of legislation activity is deteriorating when the terms used in laws admit very broad interpretation, there has already appeared the number of laws which after the series of amendments transformed into «the patchwork quilts».  «For example the notorious Law 94-FL on state procurements after numerous corrections has become so complicated that today any participant of economical activity risks to offend something in it. Eventually the regulation entities have learned to avoid it and the law has lost its meaning. The principle works: if there is no stability in the rules of play, there aren`t rules at all»,  - Ermolenko stated. One more trend is the continuous legislator`s focusing on the strengthening of the responsibility. «However it`s known that not cruelty of penalty but only its unavoidability influences on decreasing the crime level. That`s why the penalty toughening is the easiest but not very efficient measure», - the lawyer noticed. According to him all that leads to that the value of legal acts and law on the whole in the eyes of society is decreasing.

Yana Yakovleva, the chairman of movement «Business Solidarity» stated: «Today the law is more and more often used for the extraction of the commercial rent income from any economical activity». Particularly she is afraid that the excepting Article 210 of the Criminal Code («Organization of criminal associations») from the list of crimes, with jurisdiction of the Trial jury will lead to that the entrepreneurs will be charged in creating not nearly criminal groups but criminal associations.

Professor of the MSU Faculty of Law and former vice-chairman of the RF Supreme Court Viktor Zhuykov has emphasized that today the legal acts actually often contradict the principles of law and Chapter 2 of the RF Constitution «Human and civil rights and liberties».  Moreover a conceptual approach to the development of law is absent. Finally there is the enormous number of loopholes and contraventions in the legislation.