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Too Much of a Good Thing? Assessing Access to Civil Justice in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Abstract

Kathryn Hendley argues that easy access to the civil courts in Russia is a deliberate policy choice aimed at countering the popular image of courts as hopelessly corrupt and incompetent that is propagated by the media. Judicial officials present judges as heroically struggling to cope with the deluge of cases in a timely fashion. Relying on field work and analysis of caseload data, Hendley shows that the burden on trial-level Russian judges has been exaggerated for effect. She documents the procedural mechanisms available to facilitate rapid turnaround of simple cases. She argues that the flood of cases could easily be stanched by increasing filing fees, but that judicial officials cling to the open door policy as a way of proving the value of the courts. Rather than discouraging the demand for courts, they prefer to tinker with the supply side of the equation.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2013

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References

The field research reported on in this article was funded by a Fulbright research grant and a Title VIII Hewett Policy Fellowship from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Additional funding was provided by the Law School at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Earlier versions of this article were given as a keynote address at the conference on “Changing the Russian Law: Legality and Current Challenges,” in Helsinki, Finland, as part of the series on “Property Rights, Power, and the Rule of Law“ at Northwestern University, and at the University of South Carolina. The article benefitted from comments received at these venues as well as from comments by the anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review.

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36. Volkov, Dmitrieva, Pozdniakov, and Titaev, Rossiiskie sud'i, 46.

37. Hendley, Kathryn, “Business Litigation in the Transition: A Portrait of Debt Collection in Russia,” Law and Society Review 38, no.2 (June 2004): 305–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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42. Ibid., art. 129.

43. Zagainova, “Ob osnovnykh tendentsiiakh,” 15.

44. GPK RF, art. 123.

45. For a discussion of how other European countries manage such “empty” cases, see Blankenburg, Erhard, “Patterns of Legal Culture: The Netherlands Compared to Neighboring Germany,” American Journal of Comparative Law 46, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 1721 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He compares the Netherlands, where many cases are diverted through alternative mechanisms, and Germany, where courthouse staff take responsibility for these cases. When I raised these sorts of options with Russian judges and court administrators, I was met with blank stares.

46. Cheremin, Prikaznoe proizvodstvo, 3.

47. The appropriateness of this procedural mechanism for the JP courts is reflected in the fact that, in the law authorizing these courts, cases involving sudebnye prikazy are singled out as being within the jurisdiction of the JP courts (Art. 3, part 1[2], 0 mirovykh 1998). Between 2008 and 2011, more than 99 percent of all sudebnye prikazy were issued by the JP courts.

48. In a 2010 study that monitored the activities of JP courts in Leningrad oblast and Perm krai, researchers found that about one-third of plaintiffs and one-seventh of all defendants were represented. Ivanova, ed., Predlozheniia po povysheniiu dostupnosti, 18-19.

49. A change in the rules for several categories of administrative cases is a good example. As the chairman of the arbitrazh court for Nizhnii Novgorod explained: “The court has been freed from a huge quantity of tax cases. Previously all tax collection cases proceeded through the court. The amount at issue could be 50 kopeks, yet the tax inspection would put in a complaint. In reality, these cases lacked any real dispute [besspornye]. The taxpayers clearly understood that they owed the state 50 kopeks but did not want to wait in a long line to pay their debt. Now the tax inspectorate can simply send a bill for these trivial amounts. If taxpayers feel that their rights have been violated, they can appeal to the court and challenge the bill. But almost no one makes such challenges.” Piskunova, “Vysokaia nagruzka,” 98.

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51. In a February 2012 press conference, the chairman of the Higher Arbitrazh Court reiterated his support for higher filing fees but noted that it was not a politically popular position. Shiniaeva, “Vstrecha predsedatelia.“

52. The draft law provides that judges who deal with more than the number of cases approved by the Council of Judges are to receive an additional 1 percent of their salary for every additional 5 percent of cases they handle. “0 neobkhodimosti zakonodatel'nogo uregulirovaniia norm.“

53. “0 khode vypolneniia.“

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