Legal force of normative legal acts and their application by arbitration courts

The article is devoted to the interrelation between the legal force and the application of normative legal acts in commercial courts activities. In general, the article displays a scientific analysis of Parts 2 and 3 of Article 13 of the Commercial Procedural Code of the Russian Federation. The necessity is demonstrated to distinguish between the legal force and the effect of normative legal acts, and to introduce the act effect institution into the arbitration and procedural science. The dialectical relationship is proved between the "acts to be applied for the case" and the "acts applied for the case" as a potential possibility of applying the act and the act actual application. When identifying all the acts that affected the disputed legal relations, the commercial court performs their evaluation and decides on their choice using the conflict of laws rules among other grounds. A legal act adopted in excess of authority should not be considered in the hierarchy of legal force of the normative legal acts: the commercial court, having established during the consideration of the case that the normative legal act to be applied was issued in excess of authority, should not apply it in the case, and should not apply the act with a greater legal force. The conclusion was made that the right of the commercial court to apply to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation with inquiry about the constitutionality of a law should not be interpreted as diminishing the court right to directly apply the RF Constitution.