Constitution Day was celebrated last week in the Russian Federation. On December 11, 2020, the eve of the holiday, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Valery Zorkin described the new amendments as a revision of the Constitution of the Russian Federation within its fundamental foundations that elaborated on it, rather than altered it: “...Of course, this complex elaboration was the most fundamental change in 30 years. It affected various spheres, first and foremost, the constitutional guarantees of the rights of citizens, social rights, the structure of power, promoting a greater balance between the branches of power.”
The Annual News Conference of the President of the Russian Federation on December 17, 2020 was the event of the week that has once again updated the discussion on constitutional innovations. In response to the reporters' questions, Vladimir Putin commented on the adoption of the amendments in 2020, addressing the history of state and law, and specifically, the inception of the Constitution of the Russian Federation “in the difficult conditions of public opposition” in 1993. Comparing the socio-political environment during the two periods, the president emphasized the modification of the state policy priorities that took place. Largely due to this, today “citizens authored the amendments to the Fundamental Law of the Russian Federation.”
The constitution has an exceptional potential. It is capable of stabilizing and transforming our lives like no other source of law. Simultaneously focusing on the immutability of the system (constans) and on the formation processes, the making of something new (“constitution”), this act dialectically combined numerous tendencies and aspects. The path of constitutional construction can never be completed. Bogdan Kistyakovsky believed that “every constitutional state must go through a number of stages in its development, which can only be attained through great efforts and persistent struggle, until the state develops and adapts these forms and institutions to itself...”
The Constitution as the highest basic norm is a significant symbol of all public law. Since the 14th century, the state as a “public corporation” prevails over the feudal structure in Europe, striving to legally embody the entire nation. The constitutional regime is the political means of this transformation, wherein individual laws are quite intentionally placed above all other laws.
The Constitution is not merely a law, albeit the highest one. It comprises our rules of life. We choose them, we accept them, we follow them. The popular definition “the law is the expression of the general will” (Article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789) implies the imperative normative nature of an act of law. The transformation of the ideas of the majority into law does not yet attest to the infallibility of the latter. The minority may also have a different and very specific opinion and ideas. The infallibility of the law will remain an illusion of the revolutionary theory of general will and normativeism. Ultimately, the law may also be illegitimate.
The Constitution presupposes and prescribes a certain understanding of the phenomenon of the people's social and legal unity. Thus, the Preamble to the Constitution of the Russian Federation contains the following words: “We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common fate on our land,” and then, in one of the amendments, Part 2 of Art. 67.1: “The Russian Federation, united by its thousand-year history, by preserving memory of the ancestors… acknowledges the historic national unity.”
Solidarization can occur on a contractual, rather than an imperative basis. It offers hope for new harmonious relations between the state and the individual in our country, as well as for the development of the greatest diversity of civil society modalities. Solidarity is a somewhat imaginary category. Complete, ideal solidarity has never existed anywhere, usually remaining merely a slogan and an appeal. Nevertheless, its utopianism does not exclude the progression of society towards integrity, order and unity — the main components of solidarity in the modern world (especially in the context of the pandemic, economic decline, crisis of public administration). Neither the monologue of the authorities, nor the dialogue between the authorities and the population, nor any other opposition of the state and society are capable of constructing an actual legal reality; instead, they only lead to anomie. Sovereign integrity, legal order, the unity of the state and citizens are grounded in the constitution, that's when the laws will be “just, not because they correspond to a certain external essence, but because the legislators themselves are the very citizens who obey these laws” (Jean-François Lyotard).
The amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the tasks of legal science in this perspective were the primary focus of the traditional XVIII Kutafin Readings in November 2020.
Learning about constitutional processes may lead a legal historian to experience fascination with the dynamism of constitutional reality and the ideation of justice in the constitution.
On November 27, 2020, from 12.00 to 15.00 msk the interactive Zoom video conference “Constitutional Construction: Historical Dynamics, Anthropological Foundations” brought together 106 participants of different specialties (lawyers, philosophers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists, philologists, cultural scientists, etc.) from 80 universities, research institutes, government agencies, public and commercial organizations in 36 cities (Moscow, Dushanbe, Minsk, Nur-Sultan, Vienna, Astrakhan, Barnaul, Belgorod, Ivanovo, Kazan, Krasnoznamensk, Krasnodar, Kaliningrad, Makhachkala, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Orsk, Penza, Pyatigorsk, Rostov-on-Don, Ryazan, Samara, Saransk, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, Tver, Vladikavkaz, Volgograd, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Yeletsk, Yakutsk) and five countries (Austria, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan).
Topical issues in constitutionalism from the perspective of history of state and law were reflected in the focus areas of the conference:
— Instrumentalization of law for political purposes: the constitution as a historical matrix and a political resource;
— Past, present and future of the constitution: form and content;
— Constitutionalism and the constitutional identity of a state: a change in paradigms and epistemes;
— Constitutional and legal norms in anthropocentrism and sociocentrism;
— Humanism and social justice of the constitution: law and truth in utopia
— Absolutization and constitutional limitation of human rights and freedoms: genesis, intentions, concepts;
— Rational and irrational principles of constitutional legal thinking, lawmaking and justice;
— Constitutional and legal space and polyjuridism: the history of interaction between legal cultures.
The conference aims to systematize and generalize foreign and national experience in constitutional construction; reveal the institutional and functional essence of the constitution; present the statics and dynamics, the main tendencies of constitutionalism; examine the constitutional and anthropological dimension of political and legal doctrine and legal practice. All of this is an object of reflection and subsequent scientific discussion, which we will continue in the framework of the #LegalHistory&FutureTalks project.
Learn more about the International Scientific Practical Conference of the Department of History of State and Law and the project:
+7-929-990-56-20 (WhatsApp)
lhf-talks.ru
The full version of the International Scientific Practical Conference “Constitutional Construction: Historical Dynamics, Anthropological Foundations” is available at:
