ST. PETERSBURG, June 29 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) – Refusals on the part of general jurisdiction courts to follow opinions of Russia’s Constitutional Court or administer differently interpreted law are to be considered as noncompliance with the Court’s decisions, what prevents consolidation of Russia’s Constitution primacy and violates the right to judicial protection, according to a recent Constitutional Court’s judgment.

The new judgement resulted from a case where a family challenged eviction from their flat citing a relevant Constitutional Court decision in another case. Lower courts dismissed the family’s petitions to review their case saying the Constitutional Court judgement was not relevant as it contained no indication that it could be applicable to persons not being parties to the constitutional proceedings.

The family disputed the constitutionality of the laws the courts relied on when dismissing their petitions.

In its judgement, the Constitutional Court noted that general jurisdiction courts should have no right to ignore its final judgements containing new interpretations of the legal provisions applicable in the cases they hear at any stage of the respective proceedings.

The Constitutional Court found the disputed laws to be in compliance with the Constitution as, according to the judgement, they do not envisage that an executory process against citizens not being parties to constitutional proceedings was to be continued, if those citizens petitioned to terminate such a process, in cases where the underlying court rulings based on legal acts or certain provisions thereof were declared unconstitutional or constitutionally interpreted by a Constitutional Court judgement, and where the respective court rulings had not been executed or fully executed by the time the Constitutional Court made the respective judgement.

The new Constitutional Court judgement is based on its previously expressed legal reasoning; the case of the applicants are to be reviewed, the judgement reads.