Judicial Constitutionalism and Russian Electoral Law

Abstract

The paper presents the role of constitutional judgement in shaping the major rules and institutes ofelection law in Russia. Russian Federation Constitution as a groundwork of the Russian legal systemkeeps the key concepts of democracy in Russia (Art. 3). To implement the constitutional basis of thepivotal authority institutions, federal legislator creates laws on the order and forms of election processmechanism. However, with a high-profile feature of the area of public relations, election law is notstable. The Constitutional Court of Russian Federation executes the function of supreme guarantor ofits Constitution. Despite the Constitutional Court is not the instant body to solve electoral disputes, itrenders a significant influence on the election process by correcting rules of the game on the electoralfield, assessing in terms of constitution the existing rules of election law. The object matter of theresearch is the acts of constitutional judgement between 2013 and 2015 and related to determiningconstitutional laws on elections in Russia. The subject matter is the interpretation of the role ofconstitutional justice in context of the development of electoral law. The analysis of the rulings of theConstitutional Court enables to identify the acute issues of electoral politics and the most controversialand ambiguous aspects of the current election legislation. Some of the issues relate to the limitationof election rights of people due to criminal record, connection and collision in the interpretation of theelection standards in the Constitutional Court and the European Court on Human Rights, necessityin the institution of early voting in Russian electoral practice, and counting the terms of tenure in theState Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and the possibility to change date ofparliamentary elections, constitutional assessment as to the appointment of so called city managers inlarge cities instead of direct election. Constitutional justice keeping the freedom from subjective politicalpreferences bears the responsibility to ensure the Rule of law of the Russian Federation Constitutionin the conditions of election campaigns and solve fairly constitutional and political contradictionsand antagonisms.