Initiation of proceedings in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation based on citizen complaints

Subject of the research. Citizens' right to appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation against a violation of constitutional rights and freedoms by a law or other regulatory act applied in a specific case should be defined as a direct appeal. Judges' inquiries, permissible when a judge questions the constitutionality of the law applicable in a case, may be considered an indirect appeal by citizens. The purpose of the research: to determine the nature of responsibilities for indirect regulatory control of courts for compliance of the law with the Constitution. Research methods: formal-legal method, analysis, synthesis, formal-logical method.

The main results. In addition to the element of a violation of the applicant's rights and freedoms, in accordance with Article 97 of the Federal Constitutional Law "On the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation," a complaint against a violation of constitutional rights and freedoms by a regulatory act is admissible subject to two additional interrelated conditions: the exhaustion of all other domestic judicial remedies for the applicant's rights and the compliance with the appeal deadline (one year), the calculation of which is directly related to such exhaustion.

The rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies as a condition for the admissibility of a complaint is borrowed from the European Court of Human Rights. However, with regard to the activities of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, two "buts" arise with such borrowing: (1) the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation is a national body, albeit external to the system of courts of general jurisdiction and arbitration courts; the ECHR is supranational; (2) the European Court positions itself as a complementary means of protection to domestic methods of protecting human rights. The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation takes a different approach when delineating its jurisdiction from the courts: a court of general jurisdiction or arbitration court, having concluded that a federal law or the law of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation is inconsistent with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, is not entitled to apply it in a specific case and is obligated to request the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to review the constitutionality of this law. This obligation exists regardless of whether the case considered by the court, which refused to apply the law it deemed unconstitutional, was decided on the basis of the directly applicable provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The rule introduced into Russian legislation requiring the exhaustion of domestic remedies before a citizen can appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation against a violation of constitutional rights and freedoms by a normative act is not a full-fledged borrowing of the similar principle of admissibility of complaints in effect at the European Court of Human Rights. Only the condition, not the nature of the activities of these "domestic" bodies, is borrowed.

Conclusions. Both ways of appealing to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation— direct and indirect—require specific court activities to identify alleged inconsistencies between a law and the Constitution of the Russian Federation (indirect normative review). Special responsibility is assigned to the second cassation and supervisory instances as the final instances among domestic remedies. Given that the subject of these instances must necessarily be the issue of the alleged inconsistency of a law with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the issue should ideally be resolved at the level of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. A citizen's appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation may indicate an error on the part of the court system, and specifically the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, which has failed to fulfill its responsibility for indirect regulatory oversight.

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