The Interaction of the Parliament and the Judiciary of the Russian Federation
Authors:   Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok, Russian Federation), Koshel Alexey S. ,   Saint Petersburg State University (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation)
Published: March 2021

The article discusses the constitutional problems of consolidation, implementation and improvement of the mechanism of interaction between the parliament and higher courts in parliamentary procedures. The research methods are analysis, synthesis, normative (formal-logical), and historical-legal. The key aim of the study is to identify a mechanism for ensuring the control function of the parliament to control the implementation in the Russian Federation of laws adopted by the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. The author came to the following conclusions. In recent years, the higher courts of the Russian Federation have been more actively involved in the work on improving legislation in various ways. At the same time, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on January 15, 2020, President of Russia Vladimir Putin outlined proposals to strengthen the role of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the legislative process. Since 2008, a trend has been outlined in Russia to strengthen the control powers of the parliament. One of the most important control powers of the Russian Federal Assembly, fixed in the Federal Law “On Parliamentary Control”, is, in the author’s opinion, the study of the application of laws (legal monitoring), the development of proposals for their improvement. However, along with the annual reports of the General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation at the Federation Council regarding effectiveness of legislation, it is seen necessary to oblige the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to present reports on judicial practice in the State Duma. The Supreme Court, realizing the constitutional function of summarizing the judicial practice of the courts of the Russian Federation and developing a uniform interpretation of the norms of the law, often quite independently eliminates legal gaps, sometimes developing new legal rules, which is not fully consistent with the doctrine of separation of powers in continental law systems. Such new rules are developed within the framework of not only procedural law, but also substantive (civil and criminal) law. In fairness, it is worth noting that this is not a modern trend, it is the Russian practice that has developed over centuries: the Senate of the Russian Empire, being the highest court, developed new legal rules long before the legislator. All this, of course, does not fully correspond to the role of the court in the continental legal system. However, the same Senate of the Russian Empire, in accordance with the decree of Emperor Alexander I, also had the right to inform the emperor of the need to improve legislation. In this regard, taking into account the historical parallel, the author comes to the conclusion that there is an urgent need for Russia to introduce the annual practice of the Supreme Court’s reports to the State Duma as part of the parliamentary legal monitoring of legal gaps and conflicts identified by the Supreme Court when summarizing judicial practice, with its proposals for improving legislation.