Aleksandr Yakovlev was born in Leningrad on 29 August 1927. In 1952, Yakovlev graduated with honours from the Moscow Law Institute [ru]. He worked as head of the sector of criminal law and criminology of the Institute of State and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and was the deputy director of the Institute of Soviet Legislation [ru] of the Soviet Ministry of Justice until 1975.
In 1989, Yakovlev was elected a People's Deputy of the USSR, and was a member of the Committee on Legislation, Law and Order of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
In 1993, Yakovlev was the coordinator of a group of representatives of federal government bodies of the Constitutional Conference of Russia, which finalized the "presidential" draft of the Constitution of Russia. On 18 February 1994, Yakovlev became the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of Russia [ru] to the Federal Assembly.[1] That same year, he had been a member of the UN Committee to Combat Torture. On 5 February 1996, he was relieved of his duties as the plenipotentiary representative.[2] On 10 February, the office of the plenipotentiary representative in the Federal Assembly was abolished.[3] That same year, he was elected rector of the Moscow New Law Institute. He was the chief researcher of the sector of criminal law and criminology of the Center for Theoretical Problems of Combating Crime of the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[4]
Yakovlev was the author of numerous publications on constitutional law, criminal law, criminology, sociology of law and crime. He was a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, York, Toronto, Rutgers University, Emory University.
Yakovlev died in Moscow on 26 May 2011.
