PROLETARIAN JUSTICE.
Taking into its hands all the powers of the bourgeois State, and sweeping away the instruments of that State without leaving any vestiges, sweeping away the law-courts of the old order together with the bourgeois-democratic formula “election of the judges by the people,” proletarian democracy issued the class watchword “election of judges from among the workers and by the workers alone.” It applied this watchword throughout the administration of justice, and at the same time equalised the rights of the two sexes both in the matter of the election of judges and in the matter of compulsory jury service.
In order to enrol for the administration of justice the widest possible masses of the proletariat and the poor peasantry, it was arranged that there should participate in the courts judge-assessors [jurors], continually changed at brief intervals, and it was stipulated that jury lists should be drawn up, showing the membership of the mass organisations of the workers, the trade unions, etc.[§70& 71.]
Having created a unified popular law-court in place of the unending series of former courts in the social order which had been swept away (the system of-higher and lower courts in various grades), the Soviet Power constructed its own judicial system, making it easily accessible to the population, and putting an end to all delays in the administration of justice.
Having annulled the laws of the overthrown administration, the Soviet Power left to the elected soviet courts the realisation of the will of the proletariat and the practical enforcement of its decrees. In cases which are not provided for by the decrees, or to which the decrees are not wholly applicable, the courts are to be guided by a socialist sense of equity.[§72& 73.]