The supreme judicial organ (SJO), is the highest and most powerful judicial organ in a communist state and supervises all lower-level judicial organs. Unlike the judicial branches in liberal democracies, which serve as a check on state power, SJOs focus strictly on adjudication. Communist states reject judicial independence in favor of treating the judiciary as a political organ. The SJO is directly accountable through democratic centralist procedures to the supreme state organ of power (SSOP) as the holder of unified state power. The SJO is delegated its powers by the SSOP per the principle of division of labour of state organs. It remains directly accountable to the SSOP for its work as the head of the nation's unified system of judicial organs.
Historical background Upon establishing a communist state in Russia, the supreme executive and administrative organ of state power, the Council of People's Commissars, issued the "Decree on the Abolition of Legal Institutions" on 24 November 1917. It abolished all courts, procuracies, and other legal institutions of the former Russian Empire and the Russian Republic. A nationwide judicial system was not instituted until 1923. In the same decree, the Council of People's Commissars called for establishing local courts (later given the designation "people's court") in local jurisdiction. It specifically called for them being established through democratic elections. At around the same time, the Council of People's Commissars also established Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Tribunals to "combat counter-revolution in order to take measures to protect the revolution and its conquests". These courts were given much leeway. According to Soviet politician Nikolai Krylenko, "In the jurisdiction of the [revolutionary] tribunals complete liberty of repression was advocated, while sentencing to death by shooting was a matter of everyday practice." Pēteris Stučka, the People's Commissariat of Justice, made clear that despite their names, these courts "were not even intended to be courts.
Upon establishing the Soviet judicial system, the guiding principle was that law was an instrument of the ruling class.
These court institutions faced constant reorganisations until 1923 when the new judicial system was established, according to scholar Vladimir Gsovski.
Principles Political organ
A guiding principle of all SJOs in communist states is the political nature of the court as an institution. As Nikolai Krylenko noted, "the court is, in the first place, an agency for the protection of the interests of the ruling class and of a given social order". Consequently, notions of judicial impartiality and liberal judicial independence were explicitly rejected. It was argued, most prominently by Vladimir Lenin, that no court could be truly independent of the state, since the state is an instrument of the ruling class to dominate society for its own material interests. As Krylenko stated, "No court was ever above class interests, and if there were such a court, we would not care for it". This was shared by other communist states as well. Upon establishing the communist Albanian judicial system, the Democratic Front of Albania stated in 1951 that this system would act "as a powerful weapon of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which in our country operates in the form of the People's Democracy, and whose only reason for existence is to defend by all means and against everyone the achievement of our people's revolution."
Because courts were deemed tools of the ruling class to dominate society, they were perceived as weapons no different from, as Krylenko put it, a rifle. The main difference is that the court was an institutionalised arena that could more effectively repress its opponents and minimise errors made in judgment. As such, there was no difference, according to Soviet theorist Andrey Vyshinsky, between the Soviet secret police and the court; they were both coercive class tools to protect the communist state order. Moreover, he was very clear on court procedure and criminal law being political tools of coercion. The difference between the court and the secret police was not the level of coercion, but that the court, as an institution, allowed for public hearings with participation by the accused. Clarifying how these values were institutionalised, Soviet Minister of Justice Nikolay Rychkov stressed, in 1947, the importance of judges conducting court activities and formulating judgements designed to highlight the political quality of the case in question. This had to be accomplished so that the defendant would be clearly informed of how state policy affected the court's ruling.
In communist states, the judge is viewed as a politician and an active political actor who must be aware of the state's will, which, by definition, is the communist party's will. For example, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) established general guidelines for judicial work and supervised their implementation. To ensure that the state's will is enforced, the SJO must be structured to ensure that judgments are directed in line with the policy objectives pursued by the state, which means that the justice administered by the SJO is class justice, which equates the advancement of communism with justice and its obstruction with injustice. Courts, therefore, prioritise enforcing socialist laws and equity principles to protect the communist state order. This is often codified in the constitution, as it was in the 1952 Polish constitution. The Criminal Law adopted by communist Czechoslovakia in 1950 made clear that socialist legality as the adopted legal norms of the SSOP represented the will of the working class, and was to be used "to crush the people’s enemies and to protect and strengthen the dictatorship of the working class in order to build Socialism and later Communism."
Vyshinsky believed the law to be rules of conduct expressing the will of the ruling class, established through legislation by the supreme state organ of power (SSOP) or sanctioned customs. He stressed that these norms were enforced by the coercive power of the state to protect and develop the material base and political order of socialism. This interpretation reinforced the absolute primacy of the SSOP. Under the doctrine of unified state power, the SSOP is the supreme embodiment of popular sovereignty; consequently, the communist state constitution serves not as an external check on its power, but as a framework of regulating state power. Constitutional provisions thus amounted to a form of self-restraint, alterable through amendment. This emphasis on unified state power contrasted with liberal doctrines of separation of powers, which divided authority between different branches. As such, the courts do not make policy, and constitutional review and judge-made law are rejected. SJO not enacting judge-made law is in line with socialist law being part of the civil law family, but even more explicitly opposed due to the doctrine of unified state power. Consequently, the SJOs and judges of communist states are political actors who protect the communist state order.
The courts are not considered to hold any unique significance in communist states: they are state organs that are delegated power in accordance with the division of labour of state organs and, like any other state organ, are responsible for implementing the will of the SSOP. Because of that, the SJOs and the unified system of judicial organs they lead make up the unified state apparatus headed by the SSOP. As such, they are accountable to the SSOP and, between its convocations, to the permanent organ of the SSOP. However, communist constitutions also call for judicial independence, as the 1936 Soviet constitution did: "Judges shall be independent and subject only to the law." This means that judges in communist states are independent of other state organs, entities, and individuals in their rulings. However, judges work within the constraints set by the SSOP. They cannot overrule decisions of the SSOP and must act in accordance with its political logic. That means that while judges in communist states can make independent judgements, they are not politically independent.
The SJOs also have an educational function, and are responsible for educating communist state citizens in communism. For example, in 1950, the Soviet SJO ruled that judges had a special responsibility for ensuring that their judgements were of high political quality. This ensures that every court ruling reinforces state control and labour discipline. Consequently, the SJO is not merely a mechanism for resolving legal disputes but an active participant in the training of citizens in communism, and it uses the public nature of its hearings to instill a constructive attitude toward socialist property and values. Mikhail Kalinin, the head of the Soviet permanent organ from 1922 until 1946, argued that the judge must handle cases so "convincingly and demonstratively" that all present leave "totally knowledgeable about the case and deeply convinced" of the state's logic. This transformative role was further clarified by Roman Rudenko, the head of the Soviet supreme procuratorial organ from 1953 to 1981, who characterised the court as "one of the most important links in the propaganda of Soviet laws", tasked with inculcating "reverence for socialist property [and] dedication to the cause of communism".
Electability and accountability The first communist state leaders were opposed to the liberal idea that judges had to be irremovable for them to be independent. Vladimir Lenin argued that the irremovability of judges that liberal democrats promoted was merely a partitioning of the remnants of the medieval privileges between proponents of serfdom and the bourgeoisie. In reality, irremovability cannot be fully realised, and it would be nonsensical to defend it in the case of unfit, negligent, or bad judges. He believed that by championing irremovability, the bourgeoisie could use the courts as a weapon to crush the feudal lords and remnants of feudalism in general. This system could be reproduced continuously, Lenin argued, because the average judge had a bourgeois background. This he also used as an argument against irremovability, leading to liberal judicial independence since the bourgeoisie used the state, as any other class, in their interest. Therefore, Lenin reasoned that the only way to create an independent court that reflects the population at large was to elect judges through popular vote. In this way, the judges would reflect the population at large.