Constitutional and Administrative Justice

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 11 examines constitutional and administrative justice in the Russian Federation, stressing the adjustments and compromises made by the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) that facilitated its survival in an authoritarian state. This chapter starts with a portrait of the RCC in the Yeltsin years and goes on to explain the efforts of President Putin to assert increasing control over it and the Court’s pragmatic response to its difficult position. This meant consistently delivering to the regime the decisions it desired in cases that mattered to it, while giving priority to legal and constitutional considerations in other cases. The chapter goes on to discuss the changing relationship of the RCC to the European Court of Human Rights and how the constitutional and legal changes of 2020 may distort the RCC’s role. Finally, we discuss the progress of administrative justice in Russia, and conclude with thoughts about the ways that constitutional justice is joining administrative justice in helping authorities to identify and fix anomalies without threats to the system.