Civil Procedure, Code of

a legislative act that systematizes the rules of the law of civil procedure. In the USSR each of the union republics has its own code of civil procedure (for example, the Code of Civil Procedure of the RSFSR of 1964). These codes differ somewhat in details because of particular national characteristics of the various union republics.

In the USSR the codes of civil procedure are arranged in a definite order, beginning with general provisions (principles of procedure, composition of the court, jurisdiction, the parties to a civil case, evidence, and court expenses), proceedings in the court of first instance, and appeal proceedings. This is followed by sections on review of decisions, orders, and decrees that have legal force, execution proceedings, the rights of foreign citizens and stateless persons in civil proceedings, suits against foreign governments, and implementation of judicial mandates and decisions of foreign courts. Soviet codes of civil procedure are based on the democratic principles of socialist justice, and they guarantee real protection of the rights and legally protected interests of citizens, enterprises, institutions, kolkhozes, and other legal persons, as well as of the Soviet state as a whole.

Most of the other socialist countries have codes of civil procedure; for example, Bulgaria adopted a code in 1952, Hungary in 1952, Yugoslavia in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1963, and Poland in 1964. In hearing civil cases, the courts of the German Democratic Republic and Rumania formally apply the codes of civil procedure that were in force before the formation of the people’s democracies. However, these laws have been significantly changed and supplemented, and some of their sections and rules are no longer valid.

Many bourgeois countries also have codes of civil procedure. Thus, France adopted a code in 1806, the Netherlands in 1833, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1877, Austria in 1895, and Italy in 1940. The activity of the British courts and the federal courts of the USA are regulated not by codes of civil procedure but by special statutes concerning various questions of procedure and by the so-called law of precedents.