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Birthday anniversary of Anatoly Koni, eminent lawyer
Word is one of the greatest tools of a man. Powerless in itself, it becomes a powerful and compelling if said skillfully, sincerely and in time. It is able to fascinate the speaker himself and dazzle him and others with its brilliance.
A. F. Koni
Anatoly Feodorovich Koni, lawyer, public figure and writer, was born January 28 (February 9), 1844 in St. Petersburg, in a family of writers and theatre workers.
Anatoly Koni received his primary education at home. In 1855, he entered the School of St. Anna, and in 1858 entered the fourth grade of the Second St. Petersburg high school. As a schoolboy, Anatoly attended lectures of famous professors of St. Petersburg University; knowing perfectly French and German he also translated literary works.
In May 1861, Anatoly Koni brilliantly passed the entrance examination for the St. Petersburg University Faculty of Mathematics. However, in December of the same year, due to student unrest, the university was closed for an uncertain period of time and Koni had to move to Moscow. He entered the law faculty of Moscow University, and graduated with a candidate’s degree in law in the summer of 1865.
Koni’s dissertation "On the right of self-defense" promised him a trip abroad to prepare for the department of criminal law. However, due to the temporary suspension of those missions, in September 1865 Anatoly entered the temporary service, first as a countable official of the state control, and then started working as a lawyer in the War Ministry.
In April 1866, Koni voluntarily moved to St. Petersburg Court of Justice as Assistant Secretary of the criminal department. And in 1867, after a promotion, was transferred to Moscow as a secretary of the Moscow Court of Justice prosecutor D. A. Rovinsky. The same year Anatoly Feodorovich was appointed deputy prosecutor first of the Sumy District Court and then of the Kharkov one.
On the recommendation of K. I. Palen, in 1870 Anatoly Koni was appointed deputy prosecutor of St. Petersburg District Court; then he worked as a provincial prosecutor of Samara. After a short stay in these positions, Koni participated in the introduction of the judicial reform in the district of Kazan as a prosecutor of the Kazan District Court; in May 1871 he was transferred to the same position in St. Petersburg District Court.
Four years later, Anatoly Feodorovich was appointed vice-director of the Department of the Ministry of Justice, performing the duties of the Director of the Department V. S. Adamov during his absence.
In December 1877, Koni was appointed chairman of the St. Petersburg District Court; the same year he was elected a metropolitan honorary magistrate, and in 1878 an honorary judge of the St. Petersburg and Peterhof counties. In parallel with the main work, from 1876 to 1883 Anatoly Feodorovch taught the theory and practice of criminal justice at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence. As a member of the Commission established by the emperor under the chairmanship of Count E. T. Baranov to explore the railways in Russia, Koni was involved in the drafting of the general statutes of Russian railways. In 1875, Koni was appointed member of the board governing the institutions of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and in 1876 he became a founding member of the Law Society at St. Petersburg University. .
In 1878, the jury under the chairmanship of Koni acquitted V. I. Zasulich who had attempted the life of the mayor of St. Petersburg General F. F. Trepov. After this incident, Anatoly Feodorovich fell in disgrace. In one of his articles he wrote: “Judicial service is not easy: perhaps there is no other service that would have so little joys poisoned by something and would be accompanied by such sorrows and cross, though not lying outside it, bit in it the most."
Koni was known especially as a forensic speaker: hearings with his participation always attracted the audience. His speech was full of images, comparisons, generalizations and pointed remarks. In its content, Koni’s judicial speech was always notable for its high psychological interest, he sought to comprehensively examine the circumstances of each case, proving by his own example that it is possible to serve the state protection of legal interests, not forgetting about the identity of the defendant and not turning him into a mere object of research.
In 1881, on the recommendation of V. D. Nabokov, Koni was appointed chairman of the Civil Department of the St. Petersburg Court of Justice; in 1885 he became the chief prosecutor of the Criminal Cassation Department (the highest prosecutorial office at the time). Being in this position in 1888, he was sent to Kharkov to investigate the causes of the imperial train crash in Borki on 17 (29) October, 1888, and to guide the investigation of the case.
In 1890, Kharkov University awarded Anatoly Feodorovich with a title of Doctor of Law, and in 1900 he was elected an honorary member of belles-lettres of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Guided by his invaluable practical experience of prosecutor’s and judicial work, Anatoly Koni wrote a number of finest works on jurisprudence, one of which covers judicial ethics, "The moral principles in the criminal process" (1902).
From January 1907, Anatoly Koni, as a member of the State Council was involved in active lawmaking.
In the end of 1918, Anatoly Koni was invited to lecture at the Department of Criminal Law at the First Petrograd University; at the same time he worked at the Institute of the Living Word, the Second University of Petrograd, Railway University, Cooperative Institute of Petrograd; lectured for the Putilov factory workers, Volkhovstroi builders. In addition, he wrote a comment to the Criminal Code of the RSFSR in 1922.
The outstanding judicial activist, legal scholar, brilliant orator and gifted writer of memoirs Anatoly Koni died September 17, 1927 from lung disease and was buried at the Tikhvin Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In the 1930s, his remains were moved to the Literary footbridge, Volkov cemetery.
According to Professor Ya. M. Magaziner, lawyer, Doctor of Law, "A characteristic feature of A. F. Koni was a happy harmony of the main motives of our behavior - moral and legal, aesthetic and utilitarian. But just one of them rule over the others - the moral motive, which not only acted independently, but moved all other motives..."
By order of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation № 75, dated February 25, 2000, Anatoly Koni Medal, the highest departmental award of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, was established.
Lit.: А. Ф. Кони – эпоха русской культуры // Право. № 7 (59) 1999.; Владимиров Л. Е. Русский судебный оратор А. Ф. Кони, Х., 1889, М., 1892; Памяти А. Ф. Кони. М.; Л., 1929.
Based on the Presidential Library’s materials:
Главные деятели освобождения крестьян. СПб., 1903. С. 11, 44;
Кони А. Ф. Возобновление уголовных дел // Юридическая летопись. Г. 1 1890, Т. 2, июль. СПб., 1890;
Кони А. Ф. Дмитрий Николаевич Набоков // Вестник права. Г. 34 1904, кн. 5 (май). СПб., 1904;
Кони А. Ф. Житейские встречи // Русская старина. Г. 41 1910, Т. 144, кн. 12, декабрь. СПб., 1910;
Кони А. Ф. Житейские встречи // Русская старина. Г. 48 1917, Т. 170, кн. 4-6, апрель-июнь. Пг., 1917;
Кони А. Ф. К пятидесятилетию суда присяжных // Вестник права. Г. 6 1913, № 49. М., 1913;
Кони А. Ф. С. С. Манухин (воспоминания) // Право и жизнь. 1922, кн. 2. М., 1922;
Магазинер Я. Личность Кони // Вестник советской юстиции. 1927, № 24 (106). Харьков, 1927;
Право и жизнь. 1924, кн. 1. М., 1924;
Судебная этика: лекция А. Ф. Кони // Вестник права и нотариата. Г. 5 1912, № 1. М., 1912.