Ruling of the Constitutional Court of 17 June 2014 № 1567-O upon the request of a group of deputies of the State Duma regarding the review of constitutionality of a number of provisions of the Law of the Russian Federation on the Amendment to the  Constitution of the Russian Federation “On the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the Procuracy of the Russian Federation” 


Legal issue: the constitutionality of the Law on the amendment to the Constitution, by virtue of which the Supreme Commercial Court is being abolished and its powers are being transferred to the Supreme Court.

Ratio decidendi: the Court refused to admit the request for consideration, because it found that there was no uncertainty as to the issue of constitutionality of provisions of Art 2 of the contested Law. The Court has not excluded, in principle, the possibility of constitutional review of amendments made to chapters 3-8 of the Constitution with regard to their compliance with provisions of chapters 1-2 and 9 of the Constitution, but it held that such powers should be given to Court by a special law and that such review is possible only prior to amendments coming into force. As for the argument that the procedure of adoption of constitutional amendments has been violated in the present case, the Court refused to verify this assertion, since deeming the Law to be unconstitutional on procedural grounds would entail the loss of legal force by the provisions of the Constitution itself; in the opinion of the Court, it does not have power to make such review.

Document (169.86 Kb)
Subject area:
Public Law Status of judges judicial review
Court Proceedings constitutional proceedings powers of the Constitutional Court