Pavel Novgorodtsev

Pavel Novgorodtsev (1866–1924) was the leading figure in the Moscow school of Russian jurisprudence. The Moscow school stood for the revival of natural law and the religious-idealist defense of liberalism. Novgorodtsev was a professor of law at Moscow University and the Moscow Higher Commercial Institute. He was a prominent figure in Russian liberal politics, first in the Union of Liberation, then in the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party. In 1906, he was elected to the First State Duma. After the Bolshevik revolution he settled in Prague, where he was instrumental in creating the Russian Law Faculty at Charles University. Novgorodtsev’s chief works form a three-part series collectively titled Introduction to the Philosophy of Law. The first part consists of two essays on the revival of natural law: “Ethical Idealism in the Philosophy of Law,” which appeared in Problems of Idealism (1902), a seminal collection edited by Novgorodtsev; and “The State and Law” (1904), which takes up the defense of constitutional guarantees of human rights. The second and third parts are The Crisis of Modern Legal Consciousness (1909) and On the Social Ideal (1917). This chapter presents a comprehensive view of Novgorodtsev’s thought concentrating on his religious-philosophical defense of natural law and his critique of Marxist utopianism.