Kirill’s Koroteev Comment practices The Supreme Court by administrative cases

LL.M. (Sorbonne University), Legal Director of the Memorial Human Rights Center, responsible for the conduct of cases before the European Court of Human Rights

For almost thirty years from the time when the Soviet courts received the authority to monitor the legality of actions, decisions and regulations of the executive branch, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation developed a developed toolkit for judicial assessment of the legality of administrative acts. He defended the authority to control the legality of the Government’s decisions from repeated infringements on them by the Constitutional Court, although he conceded to the latter in matters of the constitutionality of federal laws and constitutions (charters) of the subjects of the Russian Federation. In addition to checking the procedure for adopting regulations and strict compliance with higher standards, the Supreme Court developed control over conventionality, control of legal certainty and actual validity of regulations, and also proceeded to the formation of proportionality control.

However, this developed toolkit for controlling regulatory acts was not transferred by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to the control of individual acts, actions, decisions of the executive branch. Even with the introduction of the right of cassation appeal of decisions of lower courts in the Judicial Board on Administrative Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the latter, as in the exercise of supervisory review, hears only a few cases, mainly in real estate, land cadastre or due process. In the cassation consideration of cases, international norms, if applicable, either in disputes between state bodies, or to substantiate the lawfulness of the actions of the administration and the illegality of the claims of the individual. By the cassation definition of July 2, 2014, criteria for controlling the legality of actions of the executive branch that were developed in court practice were destroyed: the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized that when adopting an administrative act, the limits of authority of the executive authority and the procedure for adopting an act were seriously violated, but the act was recognized as legal because the judges agreed with the decision taken by the executive branch.

The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the Institute of Law and Public Policy.