Available in Russian
Author: Tamara Morshchakova
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2025-2-49-76
Keywords: Federal Constitutional Court of Germany; Constitutional Court of Russia; constitutional justice; appeals to the Constitutional Court; international human rights law as a subject of protection in constitutional justice; specific judicial constitutional review at the request of ordinary courts; comparative legal studies; human dignity
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, this article offers reflections on the significance of German legal approaches for other legal systems. The author, drawing on her own experience of communication with German legal scholars and judges, notes the special role of the German model of judicial review during the establishment of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, highlighting the similarity of its essential functions and procedures with the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. It is emphasized that for a long time — starting from the development of the first laws on the Constitutional Court and up to the period of counter-reform in 2008–2010 — the experience and positions of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany were given special attention in both constitutional research and rule-making. The article discusses the unique experience of the expert assessment provided by the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on the draft federal constitutional law on the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. A significant part of the article is devoted to the formation and development of Russian constitutional justice, many functions of which, enshrined normatively, were initially interpreted in the practice of the Constitutional Court, similar to the German experience, and over time were adopted in the text of norms. This made it possible to implement some useful ideas from the German experience in Russian constitutional justice. Examples include the Constitutional Court’s practice regarding the range of subjects authorized to collectively file a constitutional complaint, the enshrinement in constitutional legislation of the binding legal force and legal consequences of the rulings of the Constitutional Court, as well as the requirements for subsidiary specific normative review on requests from ordinary courts. The comparison of constitutionally conditioned approaches of the two countries to the application of the norms of international human rights law also allows us to conclude that there are no grounds in the practice of constitutional justice to abandon international obligations to protect rights and freedoms. The final part of the article notes the importance of legal studies by German authors, devoted to the development of Russian constitutional justice, including those whose works were written for the Russian-speaking audience and published only in Russian. Summarizing, the author emphasizes the commonality of ideas underlying German and Russian constitutional justice — the supreme value of the individual and the obligation of the state to ensure respect for human dignity, as well as the protection of rights and freedoms, recalling that there is objectively no alternative to these supreme constitutional values.
About the author: Tamara Morshchakova – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Professor, Justice and Vice-Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (ret.), Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, Moscow, Russia .
Citation:
Morshchakova T. (2025) Teoriya i yurisprudentsiya Federal'nogo konstitutsionnogo suda Germanii: u istokov rossiyskogo sudebnogo konstitutsionnogo kontrolya [Theory and jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court: at the origins of the Russian judicial constitutional review]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.34, no.2, pp.49–76. (In Russian).
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