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Constitutional judges endorse the merger of supreme courts

The  ruling of Constitutional Court published yesterday

A long-awaited decision of the  Constitutional Court on the request of a group of deputies of State Duma regarding the constitutional amendments which provide for abolition of the Supreme Commercial Court has been released yesterday night on Court’s website (more detail on this request see in our news from 5 May 2014). 
 
The Court refused to admit the parliamentarians’ 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 on constitutional amendments. In so doing, 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 exercise such review.
 
It seems that not all the points of the request were fully met in this important ruling. No dissents or concurrencies were made known as of the moment of its publication.
 
Text of the ruling may be downloaded here.