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11 E. Eur. Const. Rev. 95 (2002)
Implementing Russian Constitutional Court Decisions

handle is hein.journals/eeurcr11 and id is 95 raw text is: Implementing Russian Constitutional Court Decisions Alexei Trochev This is the struggle between two visions of the Russian Constitutional Court functions. 1 -Oleg Utkin, member of the Russian parliament n 2001, Russian president Vladimir Putin continued with the reform of Russia's mechanisms of governance. While most of his judicial-reform proposals seek to enhance the accountability of Russian courts, several changes to the Russian Constitutional Court statute clarify the procedures for carrying out the Court's decisions. These implemen- tation amendments come under the aegis of Putin's dictatorship of law, all with the purpose of ensuring the enforcement of federal laws in the Russian regions. Unlike Boris Yeltsin, the second Russian president has no wish to tolerate regional violations of federal laws, clearly wanting to secure the regions' overall compli- ance and thus the Federation's integrity. The aim of these amendments was to oblige the regional authori- ties to repeal or alter legislation found unconstitutional and to provide sanctions for the failure to implement Russian Constitutional Court decisions. Legally, these amendments represent an attempt to accommodate Constitutional Court rulings to the civil-law system, which does not recognize judge- made law. Whereas in common-law countries no government body will apply a legal rule declared unconstitutional by the courts, civil-law systems lack this automatic compliance with court declarations of unconstitutionality. Moreover, because of Russia's totalitarian legacy, much government business is done via executive decrees and regulations, which techni- cally remain on the books even after they have been found unconstitutional. This is because such regula- tions can be repealed only by the agencies that issued them; thus the bureaucracy continues to apply unconstitutional norms until federal or regional executive bodies rescind the offending rules. Russia's federal structure also complicates the implementation of Constitutional Court decisions, since some regions contest their applicability to regional laws. The 2001 amendments to the Constitutional Court statute specify the institutions responsible for repealing unconstitutional norms, the timeline for responding to Court rulings, and the penalties for the failure to implement them in a timely fashion. Politically, improving the implementation of Constitutional Court decisions will grant federal authorities more control over regional leaders and, at the same time, make the Russian government more responsive to Constitutional Court rulings. This could lead to a more powerful federal Constitutional Court as it defines Russia's constitutional order. But that prospect is not clear cut. In the future, the government's respon- siveness may turn out to be a mere fa~ade for initiating an additional phase of extrajudicial confirmation of the validity of the Court's decisions, thus undermining their finality if only implicitly. In other words, the emphasis on responsiveness may produce an expectation that the Court's judgments do not carry any weight by them- selves and that they acquire legal force only after the response of federal and regional authorities. The process of adopting these implementation amendments was complicated and, for the Court, perilous. What became apparent was a struggle WINTER/SPRING 2002 95

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