The Impact of the 2020 Constitutional Changes on Authoritarian Constitutionalism in Russia: Judicial Pragmatism Between the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) and the State

Abstract

In 2003 Yukos, the largest private oil company in Russia at the time, was in the middle of merger talks with ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, an unprecedented deal which would have created the largest oil company in the world. The other shoe dropped when later that year, Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of tax fraud. Yukos was sold for parts in court-mandated auctions and through a series of manoeuvres, eventually acquired by state oil company Rosneft. Since Yukos was auctioned off at staggeringly low prices, Yukos shareholders suffered a tremendous loss of capital and have since appealed to the international courts. For nearly two decades, the shareholders and the Russian government have continued to overturn and reinstate compensation rulings of a $50 billion payout in international courts. My research question is: what are the implications of the recent constitutional changes on authoritarian constitutionalism in Russia and judicial pragmatism between the RCC and the state? This paper is threefold: In Part I, I trace the authoritarian constitutionalism balancing act in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Part II, I trace key developments of the Yukos trials and the immediate responsive constitutional changes in Russia to argue that the Yukos trials were the elephant in the room in major Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) decisions. In Part III, I illustrate the severity of the recent constitutional changes in Russia for judicial independence. I argue that the constitutional changes accelerated by the Yukos trials have offset the RCC’s balancing act of judicial pragmatism with the state by formally erasing the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.