Abstract: The article studies letters of grants of the 17th – 18th centuries and demonstrates their role within the system of sources of Russian law. The author proves that letters of grants gave definite rights and privileges to towns and town population as autonomous subjects of legal relationship. The author finds out that the problem of inclusion of new areas into the jurisdictional space of the Russian state was the dominant in the policy of the supreme power in those regions. To study the nature of letters of grants as the sources of Russian town law, the author applies the method of historiographical and clausal analysis of sources along with the formal-legal method, generalization and abstraction. The author concludes that the legal nature of letters of grants was conditioned by certain peculiarities: their standardized and stereotyped character, adoption of foreign statutory concepts and compulsory approval by the supreme power. The study proves the thesis that, starting from the 18th century, the problem of defining operation limits of letters of grants within a town area has appeared, and it had to be incorporated in Russian legislation. 

Abstract: The object of this research is the basic category of legal science that is the “source of law”. The subject of this research is the main approaches devised by the historical and juridical sciences towards the concept of “source of law”. The author demonstrates that unlike in historical sciences, where the concept of “source of law” was examined only as a private case of the concept of “primary source”, in the legal science as a whole and law history in particular this is one of the fundamental categories. Among the main conclusions of the conducted research are the theses that the content of the definition of the “source of law” is influenced by the specific historical context, starting with the dominating legal tradition and ending with the value system that have been entrenched in the public consciousness of a specific era. The desire to move away from ambiguity of the concept of “source of law” led to emergence of new terms: “form of law”, “normative factor”, “monument of law”, and others.

Abstract: The object of this research is the basic category of legal science that is the “source of law”. The subject of this research is the main approaches devised by the historical and juridical sciences towards the concept of “source of law”. The author demonstrates that unlike in historical sciences, where the concept of “source of law” was examined only as a private case of the concept of “primary source”, in the legal science as a whole and law history in particular this is one of the fundamental categories. Among the main conclusions of the conducted research are the theses that the content of the definition of the “source of law” is influenced by the specific historical context, starting with the dominating legal tradition and ending with the value system that have been entrenched in the public consciousness of a specific era. The desire to move away from ambiguity of the concept of “source of law” led to emergence of new terms: “form of law”, “normative factor”, “monument of law”, and others.

Abstract: The object of this research is the sources of Russian law. The subject of this research is the elements of the formulation of Russian official documents of the XVII century. The author gives characteristics to the structural constructs of the conditional, abstract, concrete, and individual forms of legal acts. A special attention is given to the specificity of the application of formulary analysis in studying the legal nature of the Russian official documents of the XVII century. The author’s contribution into research of this topic lies in the application of formulary analysis in studying the legal nature of Russian official documents of the XVII century, which allows determining their type, examine their structure and extract information, establish the order, time, and place of their creation. Studying the form of the legal documents allows researching them fully, without separating individual clauses from each other.

Abstract: The object of this research is the sources of Russian law. The subject of this research is the elements of the formulation of Russian official documents of the XVII century. The author gives characteristics to the structural constructs of the conditional, abstract, concrete, and individual forms of legal acts. A special attention is given to the specificity of the application of formulary analysis in studying the legal nature of the Russian official documents of the XVII century. The author’s contribution into research of this topic lies in the application of formulary analysis in studying the legal nature of Russian official documents of the XVII century, which allows determining their type, examine their structure and extract information, establish the order, time, and place of their creation. Studying the form of the legal documents allows researching them fully, without separating individual clauses from each other.

Abstract: The subject of the research is the legislative system of the 1730th – the 1740th. The authors attempt to objectively assess certain institutions of the system of law of the Russian Empire in the reign of Anna Ioannovna. Special attention is paid to the specificity of the form and the content of legal acts. The authors prove that the legal practice of that period was unstable and imperfect. The authors note a significant influence of German law-making culture on the form and the content of legal documents. At the same time it is shown that a great deal of legal acts had a bulky and unstructured linguistic form without a division into clauses, paragraphs, etc. On the base of the logical and system-structural methods the authors consider the types of the sources of law of this historical period, analyze and structure them. The authors come to the following conclusions: during the reign of Anna Ioannovna there had been made an unsuccessful attempt to separate the court from the administrative bodies; the Senate had again been made the highest appellate judicial institution; the 1714 primogeniture act had been abrogated; the issues of the responsibilities of the authorities had been actively managed; special attention had been paid to the activities of fiscal bodies and to the regulation of the military department; the system of criminal penalties remained unchanged except for the toughening of sanctions for state crimes.