Evolution of the public assembly law in Russia

About the author:

Alexander V. Salenko, Dr. Sci. (Jur.), Master of Law (LL.M., Göttingen), Associated Professor, Higher School of Law of the Educational and Scientific Cluster “Institute of Management and Territorial Development” of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Member of the Qualification Board of Judges of the Kaliningrad Region, Kaliningrad, Russia; asalenko@kantiana.ru

Abstract:

In Russia, from the end of the 19th century to the present day, the public assembly law, which regulates the implementation of the constitutional right to freedom of peaceful assembly, is in the process of constant development. The author conducts a historical and legal analysis of domestic legislation, as well as constitutional and legal ideas in the field of the public assembly law. Based on the analyses, the author came to conclusion that the first constitutional ideas regarding formal fixation of the subjective right of citizens to freedom of peaceful assembly were expressed by the Decembrists in their program documents. The author comes to the conclusion that in the time of Russian revolutions of 1905-1917 the process of the real elaboration of constitutional norms regulating the right of public assembly has been started; exactly at that time based on the idea of the constitutional state the Russian legal scholars have prepared the domestic doctrine of the public assembly law, which was elaborated based on comparative research (for example, the Russian legal scholars have analyzed and applied the German legal doctrice of Versammlungsrecht). The article provides a periodization of the development of the public assembly law in Russia. It is also noted that the constitutional and legal tradition of pre-revolutionary lawyers, according to which the public assembly law has been defined in domestic public law, was then interrupted in the Soviet era, when the freedom of peaceful assembly has had merely a declarative character. The general conclusion is that at present moment in the Russian legal system there is a process of the gradual formation of the public assembly law, which combines the norms of the Constitution of Russia, federal laws, as well as the practice of the Constitutional Court of Russia and courts of general jurisdiction. The author considers that today the Russian Federation is making a slow and associated with a significant number of problems ascent to the law — the arduous climb to the public assembly law.

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