Available in Russian
Author: Mikhail Krasnov
Keywords: constitutional amendment; interpretations of the Constitution; judicial activism; the Constitutional Court; the legal constraints for interpretation
The article seeks to figure out if the so-called ‘interpretations’ of the Constitution by the Constitutional Court are actually aimed at changing and amending the Constitution. The author claims that if such a powerful agency releases an actual constitutional amendment, it should be perceived negatively. Not only it exceeds the authority of the Constitutional Court, but, doing so, the Court, which is established to strictly guard the Constitution, actually infringes upon the competence of the constitutive power. Moreover, while the Court can challenge the constitutionality of any amendment proposed by the Parliament, its own interpretations of the Constitution are final and cannot be judged. To address the stated issue, the article investigates the actual interpretations of the Constitution given by the Constitutional Court. Included in the analysis are 13 interpretation of the Constitution by the Constitutional Court made since 23 March 1995. Along with them, the article takes into account 8 court orders which reasonably deny the requests for interpretation – either because of an improper subject or due to the lack of any actual indeterminacy to be resolved. Prior to analyzing these decisions, the article also reviews the legal constraints for interpretation of the Constitution stated by law and the decisions of the Constitutional Court. The author provides the reader with the opportunity to assess whether the decisions of the Constitutional Court contain an actual amendment, which are presented in a chart which in a nutshell shows all these decisions. According to the author, among such decisions there are three which indeed are actual constitutional amendments, and one of which does not correspond to some fundamentals of the existing constitutional system.
About the author: Mikhail Krasnov – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Tenured Professor, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Krasnov M. (2016) Tolkovaniya Konstitutsii kak eyo fakticheskie popravki [Interpretations of the Constitution as Its Actual Amendments]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 1, pp. 77–91. (In Russian).
References
Barabash Yu. (2014) Opyt konstitutsionnogo reformirovaniya v Ukraine: v poiskakh evropeyskogo ideala [Constitutional Reform in Ukraine: a Search of the European Ideal]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 1, pp. 22–33. (In Russian).
Ershov V. N. (1999) K voprosu o tolkovanii chasti 4 stat’i 111 Konstitutsii RF [On Construing of Article 111, Part 4 of the Russian Federation Constitution]. Zhurnal rossiyskogo prava, no. 5/6, pp. 50–56. (In Russian).
Gadzhiev G. A. (ed.) (2012) Kommentariy k Federal’nomu konstitutsionnomu zakonu «O Konstitutsionnom Sude Rossiyskoy Federatsii» [Commentary to the Federal Constitutional Law “On the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation”], Moscow: Norma: INFRA-M. (In Russian).
Gadzhiev H. (2000) Predely tolkovaniya norm Konstitutsii Konstitutsionnym Sudom [Limits of the Constitution Construing by the Constitutional Court]. Pravo i politika, no. 12, pp. 31–38. (In Russian).
Garlitsky L., Garlitskaya Z. A. (2014) Nekonstitutsionnye popravki k konstitutsii: sushchestvuyet li problema i naydetsya li reshenie? [Non-Constitutional Amendments to the Constitution: Problems and Solutions]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 1, pp. 86–99. (In Russian).
Khovanskaya A. V., Gontsharov D. V. (2013) Aversiya: opyt rossiyskogo konstitutsionnogo pravosudiya [Aversion: As Reflected in the Russian Coonstitutional Justice Experience]. Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, no. 3, pp. 57–69. (In Russian).
Kolesnikov E. V., Stepanova Yu. V. (2010) Tolkovanie konstitutsionnyh norm Konstitutsionnym Sudom Rossiyskoy Federatsii: nekotorye voprosy teorii i praktiki [Interpretation of Constitutional Norms by the Constitutional Court: Some Questions of Theory and Practice]. Konstitutsionnoe i munitsipal’noe pravo, no. 11, pp. 41–45. (In Russian).
Kozlova E. I., Kutafin O. E. (2008) Konstitutsionnoe pravo Rossii [Constitutional Law in Russia], 4th ed., Moscow: Prospekt. (In Russian).
Kryazhkov V. A. (2016) Popravki k Konstitutsii Rossiyskoy Federatsii: pravovye osnovy, predely i ih obespetshenie [Amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation: Legal Foundations, Limits, and Procuring]. Gosudarstvo i pravo, no. 1, pp. 5–12. (In Russian).
Lapaeva V. V. (1999) Konstitutsionnoe pravosudiye kak faktor stabil’nosti konstitutsionno-pravovyh otnosheniy [Constitutional Justice as a Factor of Constitutional and Legal Stability]. Zhurnal rossiyskogo prava, no. 5/6, pp. 57–64. (In Russian).
Medushevskiy A. (2008) Konstitutsiya Rossii: predely gibkosti i vozmozhnye interpretatsii v budushhem [The Russian Constitution: Flexibility Limits and Future Interpretations]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 2, pp. 11–21. (In Russian).
Shtark K. (1994) Tolkovanie konstitutsii. Gosudarstvennoe pravo Germanii [Construing the Constitution. State Law of Germany (Transl. from German], Vol. 2, Moscow: State and Law Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences.
Smuk P. (2013) Konstitutsionnye izmeneniya i konstitutsionnaya real’nost’ v Vengrii [Constitutional Changes and Constitutional Reality In Hungary]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 5, pp. 32–43. (In Russian).
Tumanov V. A. (1996) Pyat’ let Konstitutsionnoy yustitsii v Rossii: uroki, problemy, perspektivy [Five Years of Constitutional Justice in Russia: Experience, Problems, Prospects]. Vestnik Konstitutsionnogo Suda Rossiyskoy Federatsii, no. 6, pp. 10–15. (In Russian).
Zagretdinov V. (2015) Konstitutsionnoe orudie polititsheskoy bor’by [Constitutional Weaponry in Political Fighting]. Sravnitel’noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no. 5, pp. 104–119. (In Russian).
Zvyagin Yu. G. (1999) O chyom zastavil zadumat’sya pravitel’stvennyy krizis [What Thoughts Did the Government Crisis Invoke]. Zhurnal rossiyskogo prava, no. 5/6, pp. 44–50. (In Russian).