News

Discussion on an article by Alexander Vereshchagin, Artem Karapetov and Yuly Tay “The Ways for Improvement of Law-Making Activities of the Supreme Commercial Court of Russia” to be published in the sixth issue of the “Herald of the Supreme Commercial Court of the Russian Federation”.  The text of the article, reviews, audio and video of the event may be found here; event coverage by D.Smolnikov on Zakon.ru web portal – here, a speech by Prof. Artem Karapetov on the subject of the article in the TV programme “Law Thursday” - here.

The importance of preceding practice and available court decisions, the very precedentiality liberate a particular judge from individual responsibility.  During a year ECHR receives about 50 thousand complaints. They mostly have one-type character. Usually it is possible to find an apposite decision, based on the ones adopted earlier… In Russia we, judges, exercise justice, often being guided by our intuition, our ideas of justice, good and evil. In ECHR the same things also exist, but bear less emotional character. The approach is rather pragmatic, procedural, precedential. (Full version.)

21 May 2013 – in the meeting of the Council of Judges of the Russian Federation the issue of legal precedent and uniformity of court practice has been discussed. See more detail in the event coverage by Olga Pleshanova from Zakon.ru web portal here.

"The legal positions formulated by the Presidium and Plenary Session of the Supreme Commercial Court, - they are not only a guidance how to act, but also drafts for future court decisions"

III Saint Petersburg International Legal Forum took place, within which there was a round table “The Role of Judicial Discretion: Russian and Foreign Experience”, with participation of Alexander Vereshchagin, Andrey Egorov, Artem Karapetov, Sergey Sarbash and other specialists.  A press release on the event may be found here, an event coverage by V.Bagaev (Zakon.ru web portal) – here, video (with English translation) – here.

The highest courts, when generalizing judicial practice in certain categories of cases, formulate legal opinions which every court must follow. These positions can be right or wrong. But the judge must follow them, because he cannot appeal against them anywhere. Constitutional Court may not review the decrees of plenary sessions of the highest courts of Russia. This is the only act in Russia, which may not be appealed against anywhere. (Full version.)

Court system is unified, and the law-application must be unified. If court system does not ensure the unity of law-application, it does not ensure in essence the pervasion of law into life. What is law? Law is certainty. And the certainty is achieved by the unity of judicial practice. (Full version.)

“А certain element of “the law of precedent” will serve as a factor of incessant improvement of court”