Special Report on Russia: A matter of judgment

Nov 27th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Russia’s legal system is deeply flawed

DESPITE Mr Putin’s promise to establish a “dictatorship of the law”, the judiciary in Russia is far from just. At least that is the view of Sergei Pashin, a former judge and now a law professor. He should know: in 2000 he was dismissed after supporting a young man who had political objections to serving in the army. Mr Pashin was later restored to office, but the young man he helped to free died in mysterious circumstances.

The trouble starts with the selection of judges, says Mr Pashin. The process looks reasonable on paper, but it leaves scope for interference. Judges are appointed either directly by the president or on his recommendation by the upper chamber of parliament. But most of them are first screened by a Kremlin commission which includes the deputy heads of the security services and the interior ministry. And although judges are appointed for life, their careers (and perks) are in the hands of the chairman of their particular court, who is appointed for a six-year term, renewable once. To get that second term he has to prove his loyalty, Mr Pashin explains.

The criteria for assessing a court’s work are the number of cases it processes and the number of successful appeals against its decisions. To avoid too many appeals, a trial judge often seeks informal advice from a judge in a higher court. Astonishingly, fewer than 1% of criminal cases tried by a judge end in acquittals. But in jury trials, which were introduced in all Russian regions except Chechnya in 2002, the acquittal rate is about 20%.

However, prosecutors quickly found a way round the new system. For a start, most cases coming before a jury involve a confession, often obtained under duress. Yet when evidence of torture is presented, juries have to leave the room. Second, a jury can be dismissed if it includes someone linked to the police or security services, so prosecutors often plant such people in juries so that the verdict can be overturned if it is inconvenient.

Things are not much better in corporate disputes. Large companies rarely trust in a judge’s unprompted decision. In commercial courts a judge often takes a bribe for reaching a speedy conclusion. All this helps to explain why the European Court of Human Rights is overwhelmed with Russian cases, and why large Russian companies seek justice in London. The Yukos case showed that the courts have become part of the Kremlin machinery. The problem, says one Moscow lawyer, is that “the law in Russia is often trumped by money and always by high-level power.”