A draft law on constitutional amendments aimed at abolition of the Supreme Commercial Court

Russian President V.Putin submitted to the State Duma a law on constitutional amendments aimed at creation of a single Supreme Court on the basis of current Supreme Commercial Court and the Supreme Court of Russia

President of Russia Vladimir Putin submitted to the State Duma a draft law on constitutional amendments, according to which the Supreme Commercial Court would be abolished and a single Supreme Court created. The number of its judges will be 170; candidates should be selected by a cpecial qualification commission. 

The authors of the draft law believe that such "reorganisation of court system would enable to ensure the unity of approaches when dispensing justice with regard to both itizens and legal persons, to exclude an opportunity of denial of justice in cases of a jurisdictional dispute, to establish common rules of court proceedings, to achieve uniformity in court practice" (this is how the purpose of the draft law is formulated in the explanatory note which supplements the draft). Commercial (arbitrazh) procedure should vanish as a separate branch of procedural law (it will no longer be mentioned in the Constitution). The future of inferior commercial (arbitrazh) courts is not defined by this draft law, as well as the internal structure of the future single Supreme Court. All these details are obviously left for further legislation. 

Upon the adoption of the law (it requires the approval of 2/3 of regional parliaments) a 6 month transitonal period should follow.

The text of draft law (Russian)