Executive Force of the ECtHR Judgments in a Legal System of the Russian Federation (on the Basis of the Practice of the Constitutional Court)
The article deals with the complex of issues concerned with the acknowledgement of the executive force of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and ensuring their implementation in the Russian Federation. According to the author, the main difficulties of the implementation of the Convention´s provisions for Russia are not connected with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms per se, but the interpretation of its norms in the judgments of the ECtHR. The author emphasized that the ECtHR usually avoids the direct conflicts with the Russian constitutional order in a process of decision-making and their execution does not cause any problems in a majority of cases. However, the active using of such tools as evolutive interpretation, European consensus, limits of national discretion, etc. by the ECtHR leads to the fact that its judgments are in contradiction with the Russian Constitution or legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. Such ECtHR judgments are the subject matter of analysis of present article in a view of the assessing their executive force. On a basis of the systematic analysis of the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the author comes to the conclusion about the necessity of surveying of all available to the Russian authorities’ funds to maintain a cohesive European (Convention) and national (constitutional) legal orders. Derogation from the legal obligation of the ECtHR judgments can be permissible in exceptional cases only and may be dictated only by the aims of protection of the state sovereignty and the supremacy of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.