Berman's Third Speech on Soviet Law This Evening

The last in a series of three lectures on "The Spirit of Soviet Law" will be given by Professor Harold J. Berman in New Lecture Hall at 8 p.m. tonight. The meeting is being sponsored by the Law School Forum.

Berman's first two speeches have considered the claim of Soviet jurists that their law is a "law of a new type, different from all types of law known to history."

Lack of Legal Tradition

Many features of Soviet law are due to the poverty of the Russian legal tradition, Berman said in his first lecture. However, he added it is now attempting to give legal expression to positive elements in the Russian tradition, which, before the Revolution, were extra-legal in character.

Among these are the spirit of community, the principle of universal compulsory service, the "sense of mission of Moscow as bearer of a new conception of life," and the capacity for large scale state-organized economic development.