REGIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL COURTS WILL BE ELIMINATED IN RUSSIA

State Duma deputies are planning to make a decision on the elimination of constitutional justice at the regional level. Corresponding amendments to the "The judicial system" law were adopted on November 17 in the second reading.

Analysts note that the elimination of Article 27, which provided the regions with the possibility of creating statutory (constitutional) courts, from the current law will not have a significant impact on the general state of justice, given the small number of subjects of jurisdiction that were assigned to the jurisdiction of regional authorities.

The courts were primarily concerned with discovering the difference between local legal acts and the constitutions and charters of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

However, the psychological climate of the functioning of the authorities in the country, as noted by a number of lawyers, can change this, since the conflict between the judicial and executive bodies at the regional level gave the development more dynamism and created a certain tension.

It is planned that the courts will cease to exist by the beginning of 2023, and the guarantees fixed by the current legislation will be preserved for the judges. According to the proposed amendments, the courts should be replaced by councils created by the regional legislature. At the same time, what functions and powers such bodies will have is not clear yet.

The fact that the regional constitutional courts would be liquidated had been discussed by the lawyers for a long time.

This finally became clear after the changes that were made this summer to Article 118 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The reference to the federal constitutional law was removed from it, and the types of courts listed there did not include the corresponding category. The Constitutional Court of the country will now check the constitutionality of legislative decisions of the regional authorities.

Experts believe that such an abolition of constitutional justice at the regional level is an understandable reaction of the Kremlin to a number of high-profile decisions.

One of such cases was the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ingushetia on the issue of delimiting the territory of the republic from neighboring Chechnya.

In addition, economic considerations also influence parliamentary decisions. The necessity to cut costs, in particular, justified the liquidation of the statutory court by the deputies of the Kaliningrad Regional Duma last October. It is noted that at present, the constitutional and statutory courts have still been functioning only in 16 regions of the country.