The draft federal law On Amending the Criminal Proceedings Code of the Russian Federation and the Civil Law Proceedings Code of the Russian Federation, which stipulates the relevant procedure for acquainting the concerned parties with a judge’s dissenting opinion, was submitted by the Ministry of Justice in execution of the Constitutional Court Ruling No 174-O-O dated January 17, 2012.
The Constitutional Court examined the conformity of the Constitution with the provisions of articles 301 and 312 of the Criminal Proceedings Code of the Russian Federation – and, namely, the extent to which these provisions hamper the acquaintance of the concerned parties with a judge’s dissenting opinion in a criminal case. The Constitutional Court ruled that these provisions do not run counter to the Constitution and noted that this authorised stance did not prevent the legislator from modifying the criminal proceedings legislation or from allowing convicts to acquaint themselves with a judge’s dissenting opinion in a criminal case. Similarly, this issue is regulated by the relevant legislation as regards constitutional, commercial and civil court proceedings.
In this regard, the draft law proposes amending articles 298, 301, 310 and 38933 of the Criminal Proceedings Code. Under these amendments, the parties to a trial shall have the right to become acquainted with a judge’s dissenting opinion.
The document proposes introducing similar regulatory amendments to articles 193 and 194 of the Civil Law Proceedings Code of the Russian Federation. The need to amend these articles is motivated by the fact that the Civil Law Proceedings Code does not contain provisions that stipulate the relevant deadlines for compiling the dissenting opinions of judges and specific restrictions, which should be observed by a judge during the compilation of his dissenting opinion, as well as the relevant procedure for informing the parties to a civil action about the existence of a judge’s dissenting opinion and the opportunity and specific deadlines for studying this opinion.
The draft law will be examined at a Government meeting.
