The Amalfi code (Tabula Amalfitana): public law provisions of private law origin

Introduction: many modern legal institutions were originated and developed significantly in the law of the Italian city-states in the medieval period, which makes it important to study individual sources of medieval Italian law. Purpose: to introduce into scientific discourse the historical and legal doctrine of the Amalfi Code, which is a documentary monument of the 11th century. Objectives: to translate the available text of this document from the lingua franca; to describe the historical background of its creation; to establish the relationship between custom and statutory law in the legal practices of medieval Italy (through the example of the city of Amalfi); to perform institutional analysis of the text; to determine the relationship of private law and public law provisions; to assess the influence of the Amalfi Code’s legacy on the modern Russian legal framework. Methods: the universal dialectical-materialistic method of scientific cognition; deterministic, logical, and historical methods (the last one as formulated by the ancient historian Thucydides, involving the study of the prerequisites, economic and sociogeographical background, driving forces, subsequent influence of historical events). Results: the paper introduces the Amalfi Code into scientific legal discourse; the content of its text is explained in the context of historical events preceding, accompanying, and following the creation of this legal act. Its corresponding connections with Roman law, Arabic law, legal customs, and the medieval practice of law enforcement are studied. The legal institutions that were formalized in the document are analyzed through the prism of a symbiosis of the provisions of private and public law. From the perspective of ideas about the spiral process of social evolution, this phenomenon is currently manifested in the design of the national anti-corruption policy model in Russia: one of the most effective countermeasures aimed against such a criminal law phenomenon as corruption is appropriation of civil servants’ assets burdened with a defect in declaring that is performed under civil law (see subitem 8 of Item 2 of Article 235 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). The paper provides an analysis of the views of medieval jurists on the institution of financial insolvency/bankruptcy as a type of highly qualified fraud; parallels with this phenomenon in the modern Russian legal space are drawn. Conclusion: the study of the Amalfi Code made it possible to identify trends and patterns in the evolution of the legal system of the medieval thalassocratic city-states and to extrapolate them to modern legal realities.