Earlier this week Russia Profile published an interesting piece about a new law being pushed by President Dmitry Medvedev to empower the Federation Council to handpick judges for the Constitutional Court.  Clearly the potential for rule of law to become successfully consolidated depends greatly upon such judicial rules of appointments, procedures for removal, and other norms of operation which reinforce independence and create a buffer between the judiciary and the executive.  Ideally, a reformer would like to see Russian judges undergo a vetting process before a legislative committee (with the assumption that perhaps one day the Duma will have more than just one party).  That said, the previous closed-doors procedure of appointing judges by the court itself wasn’t much better, but it is disappointing to see the gap between the president’s rhetoric and reality grow a little wider.

Yet the idea that the president’s appointment of the chairman of the Constitutional Court through the body of the Council Federation means tighter control of the judiciary is nothing new. This control already seems to exist, according to Larissa Efimova, a legal advisor to the State Duma. “The members of the Constitutional Court are also picked by the president, so he could have indirect influence on the chairman of the court, which is what happened before. But the president also has an effect on the decisions that are made by the chairman,” she said. The argument supporting this view is that the Russian authorities already have a lot of control over the decisions of the judiciary. The Yukos case is a prime example of a case in which the judges were criticized for being politically influenced in their verdicts.