Available in Russian
Author: Aldar Chirninov
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2026-1-100-118
Keywords: constitutional justice; judicial review; judicial request to the Russian Constitutional Court; constitutionalization of legal order.
The effective constitutionalization of the legal order is impossible without the active participation of the entire judicial system in the mechanism of constitutional review. One of the key ways to ensure such participation is for courts to submit requests to the Russian Constitutional Court to review the constitutionality of normative acts to be applied in a particular case. This mechanism enables judicial bodies to signal normative defects in legal regulation and to initiate their elimination through the instruments of constitutional justice. However, in practice this channel is used extremely rarely, which indicates a significant potential of the judicial system in ensuring the supremacy of the Russian Constitution that largely remains unrealized. This article examines the reasons for the low demand for this institution. Among them are insufficient training of judges in constitutional law, constitutional adjudication, and constitutional reasoning; the heavy workload of courts and their underestimation of the importance of strategic cases; as well as institutional and psychological barriers that encourage judges to refrain from submitting requests to the Constitutional Court. Based on the analysis conducted, the article proposes a set of measures aimed at activating this institution. In particular, it substantiates the need to take successful requests to the Constitutional Court into account when evaluating the effectiveness of judges’ performance and when deciding on their career advancement; to develop judges’ specialized knowledge in the field of constitutional adjudication and constitutional legal reasoning; to improve methodological support for the preparation of judicial requests; to ensure statistical accounting of motions for submitting such requests; and to strengthen the role of the Russian Supreme Court in initiating applications within the framework of abstract constitutional review. The theoretical framework of the study is formed by the ideas of Tamara Morshchakova, who consistently viewed the submission of requests to the Russian Constitutional Court as a manifestation of a judge’s professional duty and an integral element of the protection of human rights. The article concludes that there is a need to establish institutional frameworks in which courts’ submission of requests to the Constitutional Court receives the professional recognition it deserves. These frameworks should emphasize the responsibility of each judge for bringing constitutional ideals and values into practice.
About the author: Aldar Chirninov – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Vice-Rector for Strategic Development and Personnel Policy, Associate Professor of the Higher School of Public Law, Pacific National University, Khabarovsk, Russia.
Citation: Chirninov A. (2026) Konstitutsionalizatsiya pravoporyadka kak obshchee delo sudov Rossiyskoy Federatsii: K yubileyu T. G. Morshchakovoy [Constitutionalization of the legal order as a shared responsibility of the Russian judiciary: On the anniversary of Tamara Morshchakova]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 100–118. (In Russian).
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