COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AND MUNICIPAL LAW SCHOOL (PART I)

The beginning of the next calendar year marks sixty years since the Patrice Lumumba University of Peoples' Friendship (later was renamed to Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, RUDN) was founded. Within these sixty years the Faculty of Economics and Law, the Faculty of Law have been operated until the Law Institute, maintaining continuity, took the place. As one of the university graduates and a student of prominent Soviet scholars who stood at the origins of several schools of comparative law that currently exist, the author attempted to follow the dialectical process of formation, development and systematization of the scientific school of comparative constitutional and municipal law that is connected not only with the special nature and features of teaching foreign and domestic students, but also with significant achievements in the field of preparation of candidates in and doctors in this specialty. Contrary to other universities, comparative legal analysis was using as a basis for preparation of domestic law specialists for the states set free from colonial dependence and that explains the choice of regional and country-specific research model for forms of government, administrative organizational structures, political regimes of leading Asian, African and Latin American states with “socialistic” or “capitalistic” orientation. These mentioned states took the path of independent civilizational development, came through the periods of sovereignization and “decolonization” of wide range of political, economic and social relations. The formation of the “grounds” for African, Latin American, ArabMuslim, Indian comparative studies is connected with the Department of Theory and History of State and Law, within which the scientific foundation of the school of comparative constitutional and municipal law was laid, the “baton was picked up”, at first, by the Department of Constitutional, Administrative and Financial law, and then by the Department of Constitutional and Municipal law, Constitutional law and Constitutional justice and Municipal law that maintained and updated the best traditions related to the training of Russian and foreign students, postgraduate students and doctoral students. At the present stage, comparative law is experiencing a new stage, caused by interest in the processes taking place in the United States and the European Union.