The courts of quasi-state entities: toward formulating the issues

Available in Russian

Price 100 Rub.

Author: Oleksandr Yevsieiev

DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2020-4-111-130

Keywords: judicial system; marginal statehood; post-conflict justice; secession; Universal Jurisdiction; unrecognized states

Abstract

This article is devoted to the functioning of the judiciary in poorly studied political entities – unrecognized states. Particular examples of marginal statehood are reviewed, ranging from Colombian “selva” to separate areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine. A typology of such judiciaries is shown, with the factors that prompt political elites of incipient state entities to create courts. The complexity of the ethical choice that a judge who was a servant of the “parent” state must make, when he or she enters the service of an unrecognized state, is emphasized. Corresponding statistics are given in connection with the transition of Ukrainian judges to the service of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR. The author analyzes various options for the relationship of professional judges and young passionate followers endowed with de facto powers of judicial status. Particular attention is paid to partially recognized Kosovo as an example of the most successful construction of statehood and its own judicial system, in which, with agreement of the international community, even judges from developed Western countries took part. The paper considers the particularities of the legal development of the unrecognized states that have taken place, the main laws governing the transformation of their judicial systems from tribunals of separate armed groups into respectable structures that fit in well with the new institutional design. The article analyzes the practice of the European Court of Human Rights in connection with the legal nature of courts established in unrecognized states. It is significant that the Strasbourg Court takes an ambivalent position on this issue. On the one hand, it rejects the approach in which the decisions of such courts are rejected solely on the grounds that the territorial entities within which they are created are considered illegal from the point of view of international law. On the other hand, the ECHR only once, in the case of the courts of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, considered them “established by law”. The phenomenon of partisan justice, which is an extreme form of such courts and is carried out by militants in the so-called insurgent areas, is especially analyzed. The Colombian example shows that the structures of partisan justice may well coexist with the so-called community justice administered by representatives of the territorial community (peasant, Indian, etc.).

About the author: Oleksandr Yevsieiev – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Associate Professor, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

Citation: Yevsieiev O. (2020) Sudy kvasigosudarstvennykh obrazonvaniy: k posta­novke problemy [The courts of quasi-state entities: toward formulating the issues]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.29, no.4, pp.111–130. (In Russian).

References

(2015) Antiteroristichna operatsiya. Mobilizatsiya. Sotsial'ni garantії uchasnikam ATO: praktichniy posibnik [The antiterrorist operation. Mobilization. Social guarantees for the participants of the ATO: a practical guide], Kyiv: Tsentr uchbovoї lіteraturi. (In Ukrainian).

Askary P., Hosseinnejad K. (2019) Non-State Courts: Illegal or Conditional? The Case of Da’esh Courts. Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies, vol.10, no.2, pp.240–264.

Baylis E. (2007) Parallel Courts in Post-Conflict Kosovo. The Yale Journal of International Law, vol.32, no.1, pp.1–59.

Bіgun V. (2009) Pravosuddya і samosud: fіlosofs'ko-pravovyy analіz ponyat' [Justice and self-justice: philosophical and judicial analysis of the definitions]. Yuridichna Ukraїna, no.10, pp.4–9. (In Ukrainian).

Bogush G.I., Esakov G.A., Rusinova V.N. (2017) Mezhdnarodnye prestup­leniya: model' implementatsii v rossiyskoe ugolovnoe zakonodatel'stvo [International crimes: the model of implementation in Russian criminal legislation], Moscow: Prospekt. (In Russian).

Dobronravin N.A. (2013) Modernizatsiya na obochine: vyzhivanie i razvitie nepriznannykh gosudarstv v XX – nachale XXI veka [Roadside modernization: survival and development of unrecognized states in the XX – early XXI centuries], Saint Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Evropeyskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge. (In Russian).

Dobronravin N. (2011) Nepriznannye gosudarstva v “seroy zonemirovoy politiki: osnovy vyzhivaniya i pravila suverenizatsii [Unrecognized states in the gray zone of the world politics: basics of survival and rules of suverenization]: Working paper M-21/11, Saint Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Evropeyskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge. (In Russian).

Gal'perin M.L., Borisova Ya.Yu. (2019) Evropeyskaya konventsiya o za­shchite prav cheloveka – pravo voyny? [The European Convention on Human Rights – the law of war?]. Zakon, no.6, pp.105–111. (In Russian).

Gel'man V.Ya. (2003) Politicheskie elity i strategii regional'noy identichnosti [Political elites and strategies of regional identification]. Zhurnal sotsiologii i sotsial'noy antropologii, vol.6, no.2, pp.91–105. (In Russian).

Gel'man V.Ya. (2016) Svoboda regionov [The freedom of regions]. In: Belenkina K., Venyavkin I., Nemzer A., Trofimova T. (eds.) Muzey 90-kh: Territoriya svobody [Museum of the 90s: The territory of freedom], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, pp.111–120. (In Russian).

Ginsburg T. (2019) Rebel Use of Law and Courts. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol.15, pp.495–507.

Golubok S. (2011) O sootvetstvii mezhdunarodnomu pravu odnostoronney deklaratsii nezavisimosti Kosovo [Compliance of unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo with international law]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.1, no.1, pp.21–30. (In Russian).

Harris D., O’Boyle M., Warbrick C. (2016) Pravo Evropeyskoy konventsii po pravam cheloveka [Harris, O’Boyle & Warbrick: Law of the European Convention on Human Rights], V.A.Vlasikhin et al. (transl.), A.I.Kovler (ed.), Moscow: Razvitie pravovykh sistem. (In Russian).

Il'in M.V., Meleshkina E.Yu., Mel'vil' A.Yu. (2010) Formirovanie novykh gosudarstv: vneshnie i vnutrennie faktory konsolidatsii [Establishment of new states: external and internal factors of consolidation]. Polis, no.3, pp.26–39. (In Russian).

Klamberg M. (2018) The Legality of Rebel Courts during Non-International Armed Conflicts. Journal of International Criminal Justice, vol.16, no.2, pp.235–263.

Kostogryzov P.I. (2018) Obshchinnoe pravosudie v stranakh Latinskoy Ame­riki [Community justice in Latin American countries], Moscow: Yurlit­inform. (In Russian).

Kozhanovskiy A.N. (1993) Narody Ispanii vo vtoroy polovine XX veka: Opyt avtonomizatsii i natsional'nogo razvitiya [The peoples of Spain in the second half of the XX century: Experience of autonomy and national development], Moscow: Nauka. (In Russian).

Kovler A.I. (2014) Moral' i pravo: poslanie Al'bera Kamyu [The morality and law: the message of Albert Camus]. In: Grafskiy V.G. (ed.) Pravo i literatura [Law and literature], Moscow: Norma, pp.9–26. (In Russian).

Kovler A.I. (2018) “Al'ternativnaya yustitsiya” v kontekste pravovogo plyu­ralizma [“Alternative justice” in the context of legal pluralism]. Zhurnal zarubezhnogo zakonodatel'stva i sravnitel'nogo pravovedeniya, no.6, pp.167–169. (In Russian).

Krivushin I.V. (2018) Integratsiya i separatizm v sovremennom mire [Integration and separatism in the modern world]. In: Lukin A.V. (ed.) Novye mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya: osnovnye tendentsii i vyzovy dlya Rossii [New international relations: the main tendencies and the challenges for Russia], Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya. (In Russian).

Kuz'min A.V. (2019) Priznanie zakonodatel'stva nepriznannykh gosudarstv v kachestve inostrannogo prava v rossiyskoy sudebnoy praktike [The recognition of the legislation of unrecognized states as the foreign law in Russian judicial practice]. In: Aktual'nye problemy sravnitel'nogo pravovedeniya: materialy IV Vserossiyskoy nauchno-prakticheskoy konfe­rentsii [Relevant problems of comparative law: proceedings of the IV All-Russian scientific and practical conference], Simferopol: Krymskiy federal'nyy universitet imeni V.I.Vernadskogo, pp.101–104. (In Russian).

Mel'vil' A.Yu. (2012) Kachestvo institutov kak prioritet modernizatsii [The quality of institutions as the priority of modernization]. In: Malygin A.V. (ed.) Resursy modernizatsii: vozmozhnosti i predely mezhdunarodnogo konteksta: materialy VII Konventa RAMI [Resources of modernization: the opportunities and the limits of the international context: proceedings of the VII RISA Convention], Moscow: Aspekt Press, pp.16–31. (In Russian).

Nuridzhanian G. (2019) Ne bis in idem in Article 20(3) of the Rome Statute and Non-State Courts. The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, vol.18, no.2, pp.219–239.

Popov F.A. (2012) Geografiya setsessionizma v sovremennom mire [The geography of secessionism in the modern world], Moscow: Novyy Khro­nograf. (In Russian).

Provost R. (2018) FARC Justice: Rebel Rule of Law. UC Irvine law review, vol.8, no.2, pp.227–274.

Schwab R. (2018) Insurgent Courts in Civil Wars: The Three Pathways of (Trans)Formation in Today’s Syria (2012–2017). Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol.29, no.4, pp.801–826.

Skendaj E. (2014) Creating Kosovo: International Oversight and the Making of Ethical Institutions, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

Skvoznikov A.N. (2013) Primenenie prava nepriznannykh gosudarstven­nykh obrazovaniy [The use of law of the unrecognized state formations]. Vestnik Samarskoy gumanitarnoy akademii. Seriya “Pravo, no.1, pp.21–30. (In Russian).

Smaljuk R.V. (2019) “Sudochinstvo” v okremikh rayonakh skhodu Ukraїni: analіtichniy oglyad [The “judiciary” in the separate regions of the east of Ukraine: an analytical report], Kyiv: Tsentr politiko-pravovykh reform. (In Ukrainian).

Syukiyaynen L.R. (2014) Shariatskie sudy: sovremennaya praktika i perspek­tivy v Rossii [Shariat courts: modern practice and perspectives in Russia]. Pravo. Zhurnal Vysshey shkoly ekonomiki, no 4, pp.45–62. (In Russian).

Voronovich A.A. (2020) Istoricheskaya politika v nepriznannykh respublikakh Pridnestrov'ya i Donbassa v postsovetskom kontekste [The historical policy in the unrecognized republics of Transnistriya and Donbass in the post-Soviet context]. In: Miller A.I., Efremenko D.V. (eds.) Politika pamyati v sovremennoy Rossii i stranakh Vostochnoy Evropy. Aktory, instituty, narrativy [The politics of memory in the modern Russia and the countries of the Eastern Europe. Actors, institutions, narratives], Saint Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo Evropeyskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, pp.610–627. (In Russian).

Yevsieiev O. (2017) Gibridnye sudy kak institut tranzitivnogo pravosudiya [Hybrid courts as an institute of transitional justice]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.7, no.3, pp.47–61. (In Russian).

Yevsieiev O. (2016) Sudebnaya vlast' v Ukraine: zatyanuvshiysya tranzit [The judiciary in Ukraine: the prolonged transition], Kharkiv: Yurayt. (In Russian).

Zhuchkovskiy A.G. (2018) 85 dney Slavyanska [85 days of Slavyansk], Nizhniy Novgorod: Chyornaya sotnya. (In Russian).