Lynching

The Constitutional Court will consider the complaint of dismissed servants of Themis

Members of the Constitutional Court accepted for consideration a complaint filed by former colleagues. Five citizens who previously worked in the courts of general jurisdiction of St. Petersburg, the Novosibirsk and Rostov regions and Karachay-Cherkessia, but who lost their judicial status after being accused of committing disciplinary offenses, applied to the Constitutional Court. All of them claim that they were removed from office without reason and demand that the mechanism for terminating judicial powers prescribed in the legislation be checked for compliance with the Constitution. According to complainants, today any servant of the Russian Themis is under the sword of Damocles. The fact is that, according to the laws “On the Status of Judges in the Russian Federation” and “On the Bodies of the Judicial Community in the Russian Federation,” the powers of judges can be terminated early by decision of the qualification board (also consisting of judges), and the chairman of the board makes a proposal for deprivation of authority courts of the federal subject.

The law, in principle, allows a dismissed judge to challenge the decision of the panel. But the complaint must be submitted to a higher (regional, regional or republican) court, that is, to the authority whose head forms the qualification board. Thus, a vicious circle is formed. “The applicants also point out that the qualification boards of judges cannot be called independent and impartial bodies, since they consist of judges of lower courts. In relation to each of them, the chairmen of these or higher courts may submit a motion for early deprivation of powers,” the Constitutional Court said in an official statement.

One of the applicants, former judge of the Novosibirsk Regional Court Alla Filatova, said that servants of the law are actually doomed to discrimination. The complainant claims that she lost her post due to a conflict with her immediate superior, the chairman of the regional court, Vladimir Litvinsky. Ms. Filatova and several of her colleagues, who suspected Mr. Litvinsky of misuse of budget funds, filed a collective complaint, for which, according to the applicant, she paid. In September 2002, the judge was deprived of her powers, and since then she has been unsuccessfully trying to be reinstated in her position and seek compensation for moral and material damage. After Filatova’s claim was rejected in the Supreme Court and appeals to the Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and the head of the Presidential Council for Promotion of Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Ella Pamfilova, she sent a complaint to the Constitutional Court. “For several years I have been unfairly punished, although I have not committed a single disciplinary offense in 25 years of work in the judicial system,” Ms. Filatova insisted.

The current provisions of the law really only say that a judge can be deprived of his powers for committing a disciplinary offense, but does not say what kind of offenses are meant. According to the applicants, due to the fact that the decision on the dismissal of judges is based not on the law, but on the discretion of the law enforcement officer, “the same actions can be assessed both as grounds for removing a judge from office and as not entailing any consequences.” And this contradicts the principle of equality of citizens enshrined in the Constitution.

However, the defendants - head of the legal department of the State Duma apparatus David Tsabria, representative of the Federation Council in the Constitutional Court Elena Vinogradova and representative of the president Mikhail Krotov - in this case did not see a contradiction between the contested norms and the Basic Law. Mr. Krotov, among other things, emphasized that the special status of a judge requires special moral qualities from him, therefore the legislator has the right to impose special requirements on judges, including for offenses that discredit the honor and dignity of a judge and diminish the authority of justice. A special opinion was expressed by the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, Vladimir Slesarev, who noted that the very fact of discussing this issue in the Constitutional Court should prompt legislators to more carefully regulate the issues of early termination of the status of judges. The opinion of the Constitutional Court must be announced within a month.

Mikhail MOSHKIN