Das Völkerrecht autoritärer Staaten - Möglichkeiten rechtswissenschaftlicher Forschung zum russischen Völkerrecht

Recent scholarship on Russian approaches to international law in the post-Soviet era by Socher and Melikov has demonstrated that Russian international law is not entirely shaped by arbitrariness and legal nihilism. Instead, it has been shown that there are consistent Russian positions on international law. However, these positions have been increasingly superimposed by political decisions based on political ideas such as the policy of the near abroad or the idea of a distinctive Russian civilisation. In these studies, the relationship between international law and overlapping ideas remained vague. A proposed explanation pointed to path dependency and legacies of Soviet legal thinking. In this review, it is argued that the theory on authoritarianism and especially on authoritarian law and authoritarian constitutionalism may offer a clearer picture on the connection between idea, politics and law. This review argues that future studies on Russian international law might not only rely on political ideas but also on political regimes to explain regional particularities in international law.
Johannes Socher, Russia and the Right to Self-Determination in the Post-Soviet Space, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021, 289 S. Anna Melikov, Die Interpretation des völkerrechtlichen Gewaltverbots und möglicher Ausnahmen - Russische Doktrin und Praxis, Berlin, Duncker & Hublot, 2021, 362 S.