Scholars from St Petersburg University examine 10,000 documents to assess the application of laws in 2021
The Publishing House of St Petersburg University has published the annual review of materials on Monitoring Law Enforcement. It includes the results of research conducted in the academic year 2020/21.
Monitoring Law Enforcement is a project that collects, compiles and analyses information on how regulations, mainly laws, are applied in practice. Such research helps to understand: how courts or government agencies interpret laws; what problems arise in the application of laws; and what could be done to improve the effectiveness of a particular rule of law.
St Petersburg University is a leading academic and expert platform that provides methodological support for monitoring law enforcement in Russia
This work involved 43 lecturers and more than 750 students. Over the year, scholars from St Petersburg University studied over 10,000 law enforcement acts in more than 30 areas. Their research covered, inter alia, protection of privacy of employees, control and supervisory activities, protection of competition, social rights, customs regulation, legal relations in sports, prevention of negligence, and protection of forests.
In their study of judicial practice, the scholars at St Petersburg University have revealed, for example, that: employers abuse the right to monitor employees with video surveillance; the quality of real estate valuation services in Russia is low; the priority form of social services for the elderly is foster care; and half of patients believe that informed consent to medical treatment is needed to relieve the doctor of liability.
Another special feature of monitoring law enforcement at the University is the involvement of students. They collect data on law enforcement practice and conduct a preliminary analysis to draw conclusions together with academics on the prevailing legal practices.
In the course of such work and during the whole period of study, a student may analyse several thousand law enforcement acts. This gives students a deeper understanding of the legal disciplines and how the law lives and evolves. Additionally, this helps them develop their skills in analysing documents, searching for law enforcement acts, preparing analytical conclusions, and legal argumentation.
Sergei Belov, Dean of the Faculty of Law, project supervisor
Monitoring is an essential part of the learning process for all future lawyers studying at St Petersburg University. The University, having the right to develop its own educational standards, has made participation in monitoring studies part of the academic curricula for legal disciplines. ’The many years of experience of St Petersburg University make it possible for us to say that the involvement of students in the monitoring of law enforcement practices should be included in the educational standard of legal training at higher education institutions. This will significantly improve the quality of training at law schools,’ said Sergei Belov. The proposal has been sent to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.