Evolution of Constitutional Review in Russia: From the Night Watch to Constitutional Justice. Part 1

The article presents a detailed historical survey of the constitutional review in Russia. The author, in the first part of this paper, starts from the early stages of the constitutional development of the USSR. The competence of the Supreme Court for constitutional review according the 1924 Constitution of the USSR, were limited to a narrow set of supervision functions, and even those were soon abolished. Only after six decades, at the end of the 80s, almost by the very end of the Soviet era, the idea of constitutional review was revived again in the process of democratisation. On December 1, 1988, in the course of reforming the Soviet Constitution, the idea of constitutional control over the whole legal field was embodied in the USSR Committee of Constitutional Supervision. Then this idea started to develop at the level of the Russian Federation, especially after the collapse of the Union, transfiguring from the pure supervision institution, as it was in the USSR, to a judicial constitutional body and the real constitutional justice. Very soon the Constitutional Court of the RSFSR was established, which, rather weak at the beginning, went through the political conflicts of 1993 and constitutional reform in Russia. After a short suspension of its activities and the adoption in 1994 of a new law on the Constitutional Court, it was transformed the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, with the status and content of activities defined by the new Constitution, and the functions and the procedure – by the special law on the Court. In the second part of the article the author will deliver a detailed description and analysis of the content of the Federal Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court of 1994 and all the changes in the legal field brought in by constitutional laws and the Court activities.

About the author: Boris Strashun – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Professor in the Constitutional and Municipal Law at the O. E. Kutafin Moscow State Law University, Merited Scholar of the Russian Federation, State Councilor of Judiciary 2nd Class.

Citation: Strashun B. (2016) Evolutsiya instituta konstitutsionnogo kontrolya v Rossii. Chast' 1. [Evolution of Constitutional Review in Russia: From the Night Watch to Constitutional Justice. Part 1]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 1, pp. 106–120.

References

Avakyan S. A. (2014) Konstitutsionnoe pravo Rossii: ucheb. kurs. [Constitutional Law in Russia: Training course], Moscow: Norma: INFRA-M. (In Russian).

Avtonomov A. S. (2009) Sekretariat Konstitutsionnogo Suda Rossii: fil'tr dlya otseivaniya neobosnovannykh zhalob ili tormoz konstitutsionnogo pravosudiya [Secretariat of the Russian Constitutional Court: Filter for Causeless Petitions or an Obstacle for Constitutional Justice]. Zhurnal konstitutsionnogo pravosudiya, no. 11, pp. 26–30. (In Russian).

Belov S. A., Kudryashova O. A. (2012) Zaimstvovanie modeley konstitutsionnogo kontrolya v pravovoy sisteme Rossii [Adoption of Models of Constitutional Review In the Legal System of Russia]. Zhurnal konstitutsionnogo pravosudiya, no. 6, pp. 25–38. (In Russian).

Blokhin P. D. (2012) Deyatel'nost' Sekretariata Konstitutsionnogo Suda Rossiyskoy Federatsii po rassmotreniyu zhalob grazhdan i ikh obyedineniy: problemy kompetentsii [Secretariat of the Constitutional Court of Russian Federation: Problems of Competence]. Zhurnal konstitutsionnogo pravosudiya, no. 1, pp. 14–22. (In Russian).

Bondar' N. S. (2011) Sudebnyy konstitutsialism v Rossii v svete konstitutsionnogo pravosudiya [Judicial Constitutionalism and Constitutional Justice in Russia], Moscow: Norma: INFRA-M. (In Russian).

Mityukov M. A. (2005) Sudebnyy konstitutsionnyy nadzor, 1924–1933: voprosy istorii, teorii I praktiki [Judicial Constitutional Supervision, 1924–1933: Questions of History. Theory and Practice], Moscow: Formula prava. (In Russian).

Vitruk N. V. (2010) Konstitutsionnoe pravosudie: Sudebno-konstitutsionnoe pravo i protsess [Constitutional Justice: Constitutional Law and Legal Procedure]. Moscow: Norma: INFRA-M. (In Russian).