St Petersburg University experts to assist government agencies, companies and individuals in analysing the application of laws and other regulations

Lawyers at St Petersburg University have been monitoring legislation and law enforcement for over a decade. The scholars analyse court decisions and the practice of government agencies to assess the operation of laws: whether courts experience difficulties in applying them; whether the laws contain language that can be misinterpreted; and whether the law achieves the goals it was meant to serve initially. St Petersburg University conducts this work on requests from the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, and the State Duma.

Now, the experts will also conduct such research for companies and individuals. For this purpose, St Petersburg University has established a small innovative enterprise "Law Enforcement Monitoring Centre". ’Most companies and even more so individuals do not have the capacity to conduct legal research on their own, lacking the necessary expertise. If a company is going to enter a new niche in the market, they need to analyse the legislation and practice in a particular field to understand the challenges faced by entrepreneurs. Another example involves a claimant who, before going to court, finds it important to assess the chances and see how such disputes are resolved in Russian practice,’ said Mikhail Revazov, Director of the small innovative enterprise "Law Enforcement Monitoring Centre".

St Petersburg University has more than 20 small innovative enterprises in various fields of science and their practices: urban studies, biomedicine, laser chemistry, and geology to name just a few.

The experts emphasise that the primary function of the new enterprise is to monitor law enforcement, although it is not confined to this function alone. The specialists are prepared to undertake any legal research, analysing legislation and practice and supporting their conclusions with theoretical propositions to substantiate their position, if necessary. It is important to note that the University can involve specialists from almost any field, and the expertise available is enormous. Philologists, sociologists, economists, physicists, journalists, and doctors can assist in the research and there are all kinds of facilities for this. The specialists are ready to address the issues in housing, customs, medical, social law, control and supervision in the financial and budgetary sphere, science and education, subsoil use, tourism, anti-corruption, nature conservation and many others.

Establishing small innovative enterprises, the University uses one of the mechanisms for transferring scientific developments into practice. Mikhail Revazov, Director of the small innovative enterprise, stressed that the monitoring is based on the law enforcement monitoring methodology developed by St Petersburg University scholars. It significantly complements the law enforcement monitoring methodology approved by the Government of the Russian Federation to produce results of a higher quality.