Class Struggle and Socialist Justice: The Case of Czechoslovakia

This article represents an attempt to assess the degree of legal certainty in post-February 1948 Czechoslovakia and, more specifically, the intervention of political bias in the work of the courts. This conflict will be viewed and evaluated through an analysis of the class struggle, a process most appropriate for testing the interaction between political pressures and judicial integrity. The study of basic laws, published court decisions, and legal literature support the contention that the Communist Party has not given up the discriminatory concept of class justice which subordinates law to politics, and that the absence of legal “definiteness” is a conditio sine qua non of a totalitarian mode of government. It should be added that my first hand experience with the Czechoslovak judicial system is limited to the period 1953–1959. As far as the sixties are concerned (Part VI), it has been necessary to rely exclusively on the published and available sources. Without benefit of “hard evidence,” the conclusions in that section must be regarded as merely interpretative and inferential.