Book Talk | International Law in the Russian Legal System

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Focusing on international law as an integral part of the Russian legal system and revisions introduced by amendments to the 1993 Russian Constitution in July 2020, International Law in the Russian Legal System (Oxford University Press, 2020) considers what role treaties and the generally-recognized principles and norms of international law play under Russian law. Special attention in this talk was devoted to investment protection treaties and the changing relationship between the Russian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Selected Quotes

William E. Butler

"We are dealing today mostly with Article 154 of the 1993 Russian Constitution and that is the one that gives primacy to treaties within the Russian legal system, but the question, of course, is this: where did that clause come from and why was it introduced in 1993? And it turns out when one examines the legislative history of the clause that there was immense opposition to it. In fact, it was in one of the early drafts and it was attacked on all sides by almost all parties in the system who wanted a different formulation and none of them succeeded in changing it. The position taken ultimately by those who saw through the draft constitution was that this came from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they expressly attributed it to the Ministry but not to any specific individual and that it was the preferred position of the government and that was enough to carry the day."

"We often forget, as students of Russian affairs, that the former USSR was a treaty construct. The USSR didn’t exist from 1917, it didn’t exist until at least the 30th of December, 1922, five years later, when it was formed by the Treaty of the Union, that was a treaty, and of course, we’re inclined throughout the period to emphasize the super-national aspects of the USSR at the time, the federalists trends that were very much at work, of course, but not exclusively so during this period and that meant probably that we exaggerated the super-national elements of the USSR. Be that is it may, by the time that events had moved on to 1991, when it came to dissolve the former Soviet Union, they used the law of treaties. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc. denounced the Treaty of the Union, that was the way of withdrawal. It wasn’t secession from the union, which would amount to a secession from a federal state, it was the attack, quite legitimately, upon the treaty foundations of the union itself."