Talk: Professor Bill Bowring on Russia’s Criminal Justice System

Talk: Professor Bill Bowring on Russia’s Criminal Justice System – from Tsar Alexander II to President Putin

From 2000 to 2003 President Putin presided over dramatic reforms of the legal and judicial systems of Russia. He spoke of “dictatorship of law” and even cited the great 19th-century reforming judge AF Koni. Bill Bowring participated in this process: he is one of the authors of Russia’s Criminal Procedural Code (UPK) which came into force in 2002. As one of three Council of Europe experts, he worked with Dmitry Kozak (again Deputy Prime Minister), Yelena Mizulina from the Duma, Judge Radchenko from the Supreme Court, and Vladimir Schultz, then Deputy Director of the FSB. The Prokuratura refused to take part. The new Code (re)introduced adversariality into criminal proceedings, gave the judge control over bail or custody pending trial, obliged the prosecutor to attend the trial rather than expecting the judge to present the case against the accused – and many other changes, including laying the basis for jury trial. In many ways these reforms restored the Great Legal Reforms of Alexander II in 1864.

Professor Bill Bowring is a practising barrister and teaches international law and human rights at Birkbeck College. He previously taught at University of East London, Essex University, where he is a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre, and London Metropolitan University. He has represented many applicants at the European Court of Human Rights since 1992, against Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Russia and Turkey. He is founder and Chair of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC), a leading Strasbourg litigation project; is President of the European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH), active in 18 European countries; is active in the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales; and is a Trustee of the Redress Trust, and of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR). Bill has more than 100 publications including two monographs, the most recent of which is Law, Rights and Ideology in Russia: Landmarks in the Destiny of a Great Power (Routledge, 2013). He is also President of the SCRSS.

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