Interviews

It is known that the decrees of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Commercial Court are for all courts a source of law, obligatory for application, therefore we, of course, shall follow it. (Full version.)

Those decisions where a legal position on the constitutional meaning of a law is formulated, have precedential significance. This is why they speak more and more frequently of direct precedents of the Constitutional Court. Although not everyone agrees with this, and even among the representatives of the legal community there are those who deny it outright. They say: which precedential significance? The Constitutional Court does not have a right to do so! I believe, this are the worst vestiges of vulgar legal positivism. (Full version.)

The increasingly active introduction of the elements of the law of precedent testifies to the deepening of integration of judicial system of Russia into international judicial community. (Full version.)

It is difficult to imagine some instantaneous act as a result of which the law of precedent shall be created here. In the course of its creation a major role shall belong to the heightening of the authority of  judicial bodies. (Full version.)

It is fundamentally important that national courts  would follow the development of the law of precedent on the basis of Convention and would follow the principles of jurisprudence elaborated by the [European] Court. (Full version.)

The explanations on the issues of application of legislation, contained in the decrees of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court of Russia, based on the requirements of the law and generalized data of judicial practice on the national scale, represent a form of judicial precedent of some kind. They are a reference point, which is subject to an obligatory taking into account for the purposes of delivering lawful, well-grounded and justified sentences, decisions, rulings and judgments. (Full version.)

Our system of law is not an Anglo-American, but European continental one, which is based, so to speak, on the statute law, not a judicial precedent. Is it good or bad? Judicial precedent does surely have certain advantages: for example, it promotes the stabilization of judicial practice in the long run, but it also has certain disadvantages, and, most importantly, we do not have yet any grounds for introducing the law of precedents neither in customs nor in judicial practice,  because we have very clear principle of judge’s independence in the judicial process – this is a constitutional principle, from which it follows that a judge when deciding an issue determines by himself what to rely upon in adopting his decision. And in the first place he should be guided by statute. (Full version.)