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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.)