This project is dedicated to the development of judge-made law in Russia. Since the most famous (although not the sole) form of judge-made law is judicial precedent, the project has been given the name “The Institute of Precedent”.
When speaking of a “precedent”, we usually mean a certain kind of novelty – and not necessarily a positive one. It is obvious that legal novelties can give rise to discussions as easily as any others. Increasingly, highest courts become the most common venue for such debates. Due to its transitional character, the Russian legal system became a genuine laboratory for experiments, purporting to develop the law and make it susceptible to ever-changing circumstances. Some of these novelties occur just inside the legal system, and in any event the courts are the place in which they are tested. The highest judicial bodies of the Russian Federation not only apply, but also develop the law. Our project is devised with the intention to monitor these complex and often controversial developments, offering different perspectives on the growth of judge-made law in Russia.