Supervisory and cassational form of judgment review in the Russian "tradition", the ECHR acts and acts of constitutional justice

The article analyses the compliance of the new Russian cassational procedure with the fundamental principle of res judicata, its consequences and, in general, publicly stated goals of reform implemented through the adoption and implementation of Federal Law № 433-FZ of December 29, 2010. As the majority of representatives of the Russian doctrine sum up, there are no fundamental differences between cassational (Chapter 47.1 of the Criminal Procedure Code) and supervisory (Chapter 48.1 of the Criminal Procedure Code) forms of review. As a consequence, unlike the ECHR, there is neither efficient (European, in fact) cassation nor extraordinary (unavailable) procedure for the supervisory review of the final court acts. If the practice (as expected) employs the system of the ECHR final conclusions from Resolution №38951/13, the access to the ECHR will be restricted until the applicant has appealed to two courts of appeals and their entirely similar supervisory proceedings. This procedure may contribute to "the strengthening of the dialogue between the Russian judicial authorities and the Convention system"; however, it is unlikely to be appreciated as a real guarantee of res judicata the fundamental values of which were in the focus of the ECHR, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and, to some extent, the doctrine. In fact, in terms of purely public trends in the Russian law enforcement practice, it was clearly deposed by the enduring value of the Russian law, which is now cleverly veiled by the idea of ensuring the constitutional principle of judicial protection.

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