Sergey Lvovich Sergevnin

Changes to regulations on dissenting opinions of judges of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation provoked a vivid discussion among the Russian legal professionals. It appears that arguments in this discussion are closely connected to approval or disapproval of constitutional judges’ dissenting opinions as such. The present paper attempts to discuss the legislative amendments regulating dissenting opinions of judges of the Constitutional Court from another perspective, namely through a comparative study of regulating of this sphere in dynamics, in Russia and abroad. For the aims of the study it is proposed to examine normative regulations on the right to dissenting opinion from “material” (right to dissenting opinion) and “procedural” (right to publish a dissenting opinion) aspects. The comparative analysis allowed identifying similarities and unique elements of the current legislation with that in foreign countries. Establishing requirements for contents of a judge’s dissenting opinion or to the form (style) of its expression can be regarded as relatively common. Yet, the situation where public expression of a dissenting opinion of a judge of a constitutional supervisory body is impossible while judges of general courts encounter no such limitation, is rather unique.

The constitutional reform that took place in 2020 affected many aspects of public and social life. One of these aspects was the functioning judicial system in the Russian Federation. In particular, the unified federal judicial system has lost one of its elements — the constitutional (statutory) courts of the subjects. It seems that such legislative transformations can be considered as a kind of finale of the history of regional constitutional control in the Russian Federation, which was discussed for quite a long time in the domestic legal doctrine. However, the format chosen by the federal legislator for the abolition of regional constitutional courts was actually aimed at transforming rather than eliminating the existing system, which is confirmed by the mention in the text of the relevant law of bodies completely new to the domestic system of public power — constitutional (charter) councils under the legislative body of the subject of the Russian Federation. The article provides a critical analysis of the transformation of the regional system of constitutional control, in particular, draws attention to two key problems: 1) inconsistency of the federal legislator in the organization of a new (reorganization of the old) system of regional constitutional control; 2) low interest of the regions in the development and strengthening of their own autonomous system of regional control. In conclusion, the author’s analysis of the current regional practice of the activities of regional constitutional (charter) councils is proposed.