Suffrage of persons deprived of liberty: positions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Recently, the importance of finding a clear and, most importantly, a stable balance between private and public interests has become increasingly important. Complex relations between countries, between judicial institutions, regional associations, state sovereignty, which has once again found itself in the place of globalization, are one of the few factors that force a different assessment of interstate interactions. The issue of the electoral rights of persons who are in places of deprivation of liberty in the domestic legislation of Russia and international law is regulated differently in the Russian Federation, persons who are serving time for criminal acts committed cannot use their active suffrage. This norm finds its formal consolidation in the Basic Law of Russia (Part 3 of Article 32). Protocol 1 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in Article 3 does not formally reflect restrictions on subjects entitled to vote, defining only the requirement for States to hold free elections with reasonable frequency by secret ballot in conditions that ensure the free expression of the will of the people when choosing legislative authorities. It was this discrepancy that led to the issuance of a pilot resolution to Russia and the United Kingdom, which is in a similar position. The purpose of this article is to review the positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the ECHR to assess objectivity in the fundamental issue of respect for human rights and the right of the state to its own opinion. And although on September 16, the Russian Federation completed the procedure for denouncing the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and, accordingly, the rulings of the European Court of Justice no longer apply to Russia, this analysis seems important how objective and impartial an international judicial body be to resolve internal issues of the State and is it capable of doing so? The result of the reflections led to the conclusion that there is a need for a conceptual revision of the relationship between national and interstate courts in general, especially taking into account the subsidiary nature of international justice and the instability of the legal positions of international judicial institutions.