Foreign Court Decisions, Arbitral Awards and Sovereignty in Russia

Review of Central and East European Law. 2013. Vol. 38. P. 317–340.

Antonov M.

This chapter examines a number of theoretical difficulties related to the implementation, in Russia, of the decisions and awards of foreign courts and arbitral tribunals. Along with the normative conditions for recognizing and enforcing foreign decisions, the author draws attention to the educational background of legal professionals—especially judges—in Russia. It is suggested that the statist conception of law inherited from Soviet legal scholarship implicitly leads to the contemporary Russian legal doctrine of negating the obligatory force of decisions from foreign courts. In the opinion of the author, the core of this conception resides in the traditional concept of sovereignty, which excludes the direct effect of legal acts made by foreign states, private arbitration tribunals, and international organizations. Nevertheless, there have been signs of a change in the attitude of the Russian judiciary in several key rulings by commercial courts. The author concludes that one now can observe seeing tendencies indicative of the development of a different concept of law in the mentality of legal professionals in Russia.

Keywords: public policy, state sovereignty, supremacy, award to execution of contractual obligations, commercial courts, arbitral awards, court judgments