Available in Russian
Author: Olga Kryazhkova
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2023-1-113-127
Keywords: Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; constitutional reform of 2020; statistical indicators of the work of the Constitutional Court; composition of the Constitutional Court; references to decisions of the European Court of Human Rights; international associations of constitutional review bodies
The article describes the results of the work of the Russian Constitutional Court in 2022. Based on five years of observation, the author uses an approach that reviews the legal regulation of the organization and activities of the Constitutional Court, together with relevant statistical data characterizing its work. This data includes the number of appeals, the number of the most significant decisions, the categories of cases considered, the ratio of various types of final conclusions in its rulings, and its use of written and oral proceedings. The dynamics of the legal regulation and the statistical indicators do not give grounds for the conclusion that the status of the Constitutional Court changed significantly after the constitutional reform of 2020 and that something new should be expected from constitutional judicial practice in the short term. In 2022 the composition of the Court changed. The composition of the Court was not only reduced in number but was also updated in membership, for the first time since 2010. Nevertheless, the tendency of the Court to function without a full complement of members remained. The article also notes that over time, the average age of the justices of the Constitutional Court has increased. Now it is dominated by men over 65 years old. The international legal aspect of the activities of the Constitutional Court is also analyzed. After the rupture of legal relations between Russia and the Council of Europe, the Constitutional Court stopped referring to the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in its decisions. In addition, in 2022 the Court withdrew from two authoritative international associations of constitutional review bodies, while still maintaining ties with three such regional associations. In 2022, when the accessibility of the European Court of Human Rights for Russian citizens was changed, the Constitutional Court began to be seen as a replacement for the Strasbourg Court. But so far there are no signs of the beginning of a new reform of the Court. At the moment, the Court retains its efficiency in its established forms of activity.
About the author: Olga Kryazhkova – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Associate Professor, Russian State University of Justice, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Kryazhkova O. (2023) Rossiyskiy Konstitutsionnyy Sud v 2022 godu: pod znakom stabilʹnosti [The Russian Constitutional Court in 2022: under the sign of stability]. Sravnitelʹnoe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 113–127. (In Russian).
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