Will a new -type court appear?

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For representatives of the entrepreneurial community, the issue of effective and fair legal proceedings is the first. This is connected not only with the fact that the practices of litigation with tax authorities, supervisory organizations and simply with unperturing counterparties are widespread. Very often, it is in court that it is necessary to prove “inviolability of private property”. Almost all contractual circumstances are formed from the Institute for Property Protection, fixed in formal and informal agreements - both those that are recorded on paper and those for which one handshake is enough.

The author of these lines had the opportunity to discuss with Vadim Volkov, the scientific director of the Institute of Law Problems (IPP) (http://www.enforce.spb.ru/about-us/team/412-volkov-vadim-viktorovich), the parameters of the possible judicial reform, the proposals for which were prepared in 2016 -early 2017 Capital Center for Strategic Development (CSR) as part of the Russian Strategic Development Program for 2018–2024. As you know, the reform draft is in a high stage of readiness, and it is assumed that discussions with interested departments and the expert community will begin in the coming weeks.

As follows from the proposals of the CSR, the main directions of the reform by its authors - STI employees - consider the improvement of the quality of judicial personnel, overcoming organizational restrictions on the independence of judges and the rationalization of the trial, which should lead to a decrease in the load on the device.

For this, it is proposed to reformat the system of preparation and appointment of judges. A special center should be engaged in preparation, and once the judge appointed will receive the right to work in the courts of the same level without passing the full cycle of inspections. The movement of judges vertically simplifies: the personnel commission under the Russian President considers judges only upon first appointment, and moving to other positions (for example, from the Leningrad and Murmansk regions to Karelia or vice versa) occurs on the proposal of the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and by decision of the qualification collegium of judges.

Law enforcement officers in the presidential commission should be replaced by representatives of the Kremlin administration and for the first time - the public.

It is also proposed to introduce the elections of the chairmen of district and city courts, to limit the time of their stay in the position of three three years and reduce their powers: to deprive the right to make ideas about bringing judges to disciplinary liability and the possibility of distributing a bonus, as well as introduce an automated procedure for the distribution of cases between judges.

The process should help rationalize the mandatory audio protocoling and improvement of electronic document management.

Under the declared goals, “signed”, obviously, every entrepreneur, because they are formulated on the principle of “for all the good, against everything bad”. The key point here, of course, is the independence of judges, who, as you know, are built into the circumstances of the “lean”, for example, from the opinion of the chairman at the stage of distribution of cases between judges. The chairmen themselves are currently forming a separate caste located outside even minimal public control, which, in turn, is not only acceptable, but also necessary for representatives of other branches of power - legislative and executive.

Of course, the judicial reform plan will be forced to overcome the resistance of the current system. The proposed ways to implement some obvious (even for ordinary participants in trials) problems cause questions, but it should be noted that they are initially built on completely correctly diagnosed problems of the judicial system.

So, for example, conservative opinions are already expressed that “ensuring the independence of judges” is understood in the design documents quite “absolutely”, in practice this may say to open the path of completely monstrous corruption. The proposed system of the formation of the judicial corps is also doubtful - in particular, the refusal of inspections of judges after appointment. This is obviously one of the most difficult moments. The lifelity of the appointment conflicts with the principle in accordance with which the competent authorities, according to the results of operational inspections, can, for example, establish signs of corruption crimes committed by the judge, but it will become impossible to “declare” this during the “horizontal” reset.

The most important moment in strategically is the time of approval and the beginning of the implementation of the reform. Is it worth waiting for the March (2018) post-electrical “window of opportunities”? Or is the judicial reform can be initiated as soon as possible, since the president who reflects on the last elected cycle becomes critically important to leave really working institutions? Obviously, Vladimir Putin would like to refuse the “manual control” regime in the courts as soon as possible.

And in this matter, the position of the authors of the transformation is very careful. The CSR reform, like any other, will probably be embodied partially or decoratively, but at least at least the problem of realistic efforts has already been posed in order to achieve an independent and autonomous court in today's socio-political realities, even if a large-scale struggle of state and non-governmental interests for control over it unfolds.