Effect of Decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation: Impact of Constitutional Changes

Abstract

The activities of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation are aimed at achieving a number of goals, the main one of which is to ensure the proper implementation of the Constitution in the nation's legal system as an act endowed with supreme legal force and having direct effect. The main external embodiment of this activity are the decisions of the Constitutional Court on specific cases. In this regard, it is of interes thow these decisions operate and are applied in the event that the Constitution - their legal basis - undergoes changes as a result of amendments to it. The complexity of this problem is determined by the high level of normative generalization of the provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, as well as legal positions of the Constitutional Court. This topic is of quite practical interest, since in 2020 the Constitution of the Russian Federation underwent a fairly deep modernization. It can be expected that the Constitutional Court will in the near future face the need to determine the limits of application of its earlier decisions. In this regard, the article analyzes the existing practice of the Constitutional Court on the issues of the legal force of its decisions taken before the entry into force of the current Constitution. Examples from foreign experience are given, illustrating the problem of correlation of the changing constitutions with the decisions of the judicial bodies of constitutional control.