What's in a word: “sovereignty” in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The word “sovereignty” (суверенитет) played a crucial role in Russian political discourse during the second term of Vladimir Putin as the second President of Russia. The word formed part of a pair: “sovereign democracy” (cуверенная демократия), extracted by Vitaliy Tretyakov (2005) and Vladislav Surkov (2006), the ideologist of the regime, from Putin’s first six annual addresses to parliament to 2005. The discourse was encapsulated in the collection of articles, including Putin’s addresses and articles by Medvedev and others, published later in 2006 (Garadja, 2006). I explore these issues in my book on Russia (Bowring, 2013 b). This article explores the role played by “sovereignty in the legal discourse of the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Valeriy Zorkin. Mr Zorkin, born in 1943, has been a judge of the Court since its establishment in 1991. He served as Chairman from 1991 to 1993, when the Court was suspended after it declared unconstitutional Boris Yeltsin’s storming of the Supreme Soviet in the White House and, tearing up of the Constitution. He resumed his role as a judge of the Court in 1994, and in 2003 he was again elected Chairman, a post he still holds.