Sokolov, T.V. Decisions and legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation: nature, types and correlation

Abstract: The article provides a novel differentiated approach towards the nature of decisions and legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. Depending on the presence of general conclusions author offers to distinguish among the decisions the normative enforcement (no conclusions regarding the status of legal norm); normative interpretation (conclusion on actual contents of the norm); normative correction (changing the contents of a legal norm due to a constitutional defect of a legal norm). Accordingly, these decisions serve as acts of legal enforcement, legal interpretation, and sources of law. The legal positions of the Court, which are conclusions of the court on the questions posed to them, are different from the decisions. Decisions and legal positions correlate as form and contents, part and whole. The author offers to distinguish normative and doctrinal legal positions, negative and positive legal positions, temporary and permanent legal positions. The author proves that the normative legal positions of the Court, as expressed in normatively correcting decisions of the Court serve as a specific source of law, which may not be included into any of the previously known groups of such sources, due to its unique legal qualities.

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