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Уставные суды в субъектах Российской Федерации: сравнительный политико-правовой анализ
The development of regional constitutional justice has become an important issue not only for law but also for politics. However, the main emphasis in modern studies is shifted towards the study of primarily legal aspects of the activities of constitutional (statutory) courts. The authors consider that regional constitutional justice has a mixed political and legal nature and requires an interdisciplinary approach based on studying not only legal but also political conditions of constitutional (statutory) courts. In this article, the authors conduct a comparative political and legal analysis of the experience of the emergence and evolution of four statutory courts in the subjects of the Russian Federation – in the Sverdlovsk, Kaliningrad, Chelyabinsk regions and in St. Petersburg. It is shown that as the political regime in Russia and its regions evolves towards monocentricity, there can be observed either a decrease in the level of their capabilities and powers or their liquidation, as it happened with the Statutory Court in the Chelyabinsk Region. The most significant changes in the powers of the Statutory Court are noted in St. Petersburg, the reason for what are decisions that were unfavorable for the current governor. Three of the current statutory courts were created in the range of 1998–2003, the fourth – in the Chelyabinsk region – appeared much later – in 2012, but was eliminated in the beginning of 2014, immediately after the change of the governor. Making decisions that contradict the actions of representatives of the legislative and executive authorities resulted in negative consequences for statutory courts: limiting powers, reducing funding and composition of the court, reducing the number of alleged cases. Interest in the activities of the statutory and constitutional Courts in the Russian regions today is also connected with the possibility of their “awakening”, as it happened with the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Ingushetia in the autumn of 2018.