Amendments to the Constitution and Issues of Interpretation in National and International Justice

Abstract

The paper examines the changes made to the Constitution of the Russian Federation through the prism of the current problem of interpretation by international and national courts of the rule of law, since approaches to the interpretation of any legal text are of fundamental importance. The questions of interpretation have already ceased to be technical in nature. Different approaches to interpretation determine what the democracy and people’s rule mean, the relationship between law and politics, the place of the country in the international system of coordinates. Special attention is given to the term and the problem of "interpretation" — one of the novels of the Russian Constitution. The author addresses the question of what “an interpretation contrary to the Constitution” means. It is precisely the different understanding of the same norms by the courts, the use of different approaches to the interpretation of legal texts that can lead to conflicts and even conflicts of jurisdictions resulting in serious consequences. The paper critically evaluates the application of the so-called evolutionary, broad interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights, which encourages states to develop mechanisms in national legal systems to protect against arbitrary decisions of the international court. In addition to the evolutionary one, the paper examines other modern approaches to interpretation: consequentialism, textualism, and originalism. The problems of interpretation are considered based on an analysis of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of the European Union, American and European legal doctrine.