Ограничение свободы передвижения в свете современных российских реалий: правовое регулирование и практика конституционного судопроизводства

Abstract

The article examines various aspects of freedom of movement, including freedom of movement within the Russian Federation and beyond its borders, the right of free and unhindered return to Russian territory of citizens of the Russian Federation. The relevance of the topic and the timeliness of this study are due to the fact that the freedom of movement of citizens provided for by international legal standards and proclaimed at the constitutional level in the legislation of recent years is increasingly limited. At the same time, restrictions on the freedom under study are established not only by laws, but also by-laws, including those of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that in most cases such a restriction is objective and is due to the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the conduct of a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine. Measures to ensure the implementation of the norms on restricting freedom of movement are the provisions of administrative and criminal legislation adjusted in 2020-2021, which have toughened liability for violations of restrictive measures. However, citizens and even individual representatives of state authorities do not always positively assess this kind of legislative reform, which gives rise to judicial practice, including appeals to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, in which applicants challenge the constitutionality of certain legal provisions and raise the issue of removing them from the legal space. Analyzing the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of different years and the legal positions formulated in them, the author focuses on the subject of consideration of cases in the order of constitutional proceedings, the content of the contested legal provisions, the legal consequences of the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.