An inconspicuous constitutional amendment or what the representatives of Federation in the Council of the Federation of Russia are for

In July 2014 a new amendment was included in the Constitution of the Russian Federation: a new category of senators was installed in the Federation Council – the representatives of the Russian Federation. But from that time everybody “forget” about it – there are no any bills on criteria applied to these members of the Federation Council, on the procedure details how the President of the Russian Federation appoints them. Trying to understand the reasons and sense of installation of the representatives of the Russian Federation in the context of the place of the Federation Council in the constitutional scheme, the author states that there is very hard to find adequate, rational or practical explanation. At the same time the institute of such representatives seems to be very logical in the mechanism of legitimation of any political and legal decisions in the context of the current political situation in Russia. The first chapter of the article is devoted to the process of introduction and adopting the constitutional amendment mentioned above. The second chapter deals with certain “specific” authorities of Russian Federation Council and its authorities which are not mentioned in the Constitution in order to show the weak position of the Russian upper house. In the third chapter the transformations of the formation of the Federation Council are analyzed and the problem of appointed senators is discussed. The main idea of the forth chapter is the following: the more Federation Council approves any laws the more social protests take place because of the poor quality or controversy of these laws. In conclusion author warns that building the monolith system of making state power decisions and overloading the President by more and more new authorities can lead to unpredictable consequences to the Russian political and legal systems.

About the author: Sergey Zaikin – Lecturer, Constitutional and Municipal Law Chair, Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL).

Citation: Zaikin S. (2016) Nezametnaya konstitutsionnaya popravka, ili Zachem nuzh­ny predstaviteli federatsii v Sovete Federatsii Rossii [An inconspicuous constitutional amendment or What the representatives of Federation in The Council of the Federation of Russia are for]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, no.6, pp.21–47. (In Russian).

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