Constitutional justice of Russia and multilevel constitutionalism

Constitutional justice as a kind of judicial activity is an essential feature of a rule-of-law state. Over the past 25 years of its activity, the Constitutional Court has formed legal positions in all areas of legal regulation, defining the criteria of the constitutionality of laws and bylaws. The paper reviews the establishment of Russia’s Constitutional Court in 1991 and its role in the October crisis of 1993. The Constitutional Court of Russia resisted the most serious constitutional socio-political crisis, similar in intensity to a small civil war. The author examines the Court’s structure and its powers, and analyzes the juridical nature of its decisions. The author also analyzes the collisions between decisions handed down by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Constitution of Russia from the point of view of the stand taken by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (RF). The author arrives at the conclusion that there is a need for a dialogue among European and national systems of justice with the help of filtration mechanisms and multilevel constitutionalism.