Available in Russian
Author: Elena Gritsenko
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2026-2-30-58
Keywords: right to local self-government; constitutional judicial protection; municipal reform; unified system of public authority; complaint concerning the violation of constitutional rights in the sphere of local self-government; municipal constitutional complaint; Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation; Federal Constitutional Court of Germany; constitutional courts of the German federal states
The Federal Law on the General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government within the Unified System of Public Authority, adopted one year ago, marked a new stage of municipal reform in many constituent entities of the Russian Federation and, in this connection, renewed interest in the constitutional nature of the right to local self-government as an object of judicial protection in general and constitutional adjudication in particular. The multiplicity of actors exercising rights in the sphere of local self-government, despite the existence of a single and universal instrument of constitutional judicial protection in Russia — a complaint on violation of constitutional rights — predetermines a differentiated approach to protecting different categories of rights in the sphere of local selfgovernment that vary in their legal nature. The article proposes a classification of these rights as objects of judicial protection depending on their normative content, the categories of persons who hold these rights, the legal relationships within which the rights are exercised, the addressees of the rights (the obligated party in the relevant legal relationships), as well as the subject matter and method of judicial protection. This classification scheme enables a systematic comparison of models for protecting the right to local self-government in different legal systems where this right is constitutionally recognized. The article presents a comparative analysis of the Russian and German models of constitutional judicial protection of the right to local and communal self-government, considering differences in the constitutional interpretation of both the subjects and the substance of this right. Particular attention is devoted to the Russian constitutional judicial practice in 2025 and 2026 concerning the protection of the rights of municipalities and local self-government bodies within the system of public authority relations. The article also examines the prospects for constitutional conflicts arising from municipal-territorial reforms in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Additionally, the analysis focuses on the specific features of protecting the rights of municipal office holders, as well as the constitutional issues connected with the exercise of their special legal status and constitutional guarantees when they are subjected to administrative or constitutional legal liability.
About the author: Elena Gritsenko – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Professor, Department of Constitutional Law, State University of Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Citation: Gritsenko E. (2026) Konstitutsionno-sudebnaya zashchita prava na mestnoe samoupravlenie v Rossii: aktual'nye tendentsii v sravnitel'noy perspektive [Constitutional judicial protection of the right to local self-government in Russia: current trends in comparative perspective]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 30–58. (In Russian).
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