2015, Vol. 13 No. 1, 200-218 doi: 10. 1093/icon/mov003

Valery Zorkin’s State and Revolution
, 
b
RookInGS
(Feb. 13, 2012), 
available at
http://www.
brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/02/13-russia-zorkin-partlett">http://www.brookings.edu/
research/opinions/2012/02/13-russia-zorkin-partlett
.
42
R
uSSIa
afteR
2012: f
RoM
P
utIn
to
M
edvedev
to
P
utIn
—c
ontInuIty
, c
hanGe
, 
oR
R
evolutIon
?
(Joseph Laurence 
Black & Michael Johns eds., 2013).
43
This was especially evident in the Court’s reaction to the decision of the European Court of Human 
Rights in Konstantin Markin v. Russia, App. No. 30078/06 [2010] ECHR 1435 (Oct. 7, 2010).
44
See
S
chwaRtz
, 
supra
note 10.
45
Cameron Ross, 
Putin’s Federal Reforms and the Consolidation of Federalism in Russia: One Step Forward, Two 
Steps Back!
, 36(1) 
c
oMMunISt
& P
oSt
-c
oMMunISt
S
tud
.
29 (2003).
46
See
Decision No. 13-
П
, Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Dec. 21, 2005.
47
See Decision No. 2-
П
, Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, Jan. 18, 1996.
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Judicialization of politics: The post-Soviet way
215
The patterns of judicialization emerging from the alliance between the dominant 
power and the courts, such as described above, are discernable in other contexts. 
In 2010, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which was only recently “upgraded” 
by new, pro-presidential judges, invalidated the constitutional amendments made 
after the “Orange revolution” of 2004, thus making the pre-2004 version of the 
Constitution effective once again. Although the legal grounds for questioning the 
constitutional reform of 2004 were convincing (back in 2004, the constitutional 
reform was passed with obvious violation of the prescribed procedures), the judicial 
verdict to invalidate what had been the country’s effective constitution for the past five 
years—in essence, implementing a constitutional reform without a democratic man-
date—was nothing short of a “juridical 
coup d’état
.”
48
After all, the partisan nature of
the Court’s 2010 decision was doubted only by the naïve. Reintroducing the earlier 
version of the Constitution, the decision effectively strengthened the newly elected 
President, Viktor Yanukovich, and curtailed the Parliament’s influence on the execu-
tive. President Yanukovich was then able to consolidate his influence and reinstate 
the super-presidential governance which had characterized the country up until the 
political reform following the 2004 revolution.
49
As another illustration of the pattern, the Constitutional Court of Armenia held 
the controversial diplomatic accord of 2009 on Armenian-Turkish reconciliation to 
be subject to a series of preconditions which were not so much based on the country’s 
constitution as a legal document as were inspired by the unwritten, “moral constitu-
tion” of a nation that lived the sensitive historical issue through a century of emo-
tional suffering and trauma. The decision of the Court is striking by its extra-legal, 
political ambition. Relying on its open reading of the constitutional preamble, in the 
tradition of the French Conseil Constitutionel’s landmark 1971 decision, the Court 
found, in an abstract, preventive fashion, that the protocols on reconciliation cannot 
be interpreted in contradiction with the Declaration of Independence of the Republic 
of Armenia which contained references to international recognition of the 1915 
genocide. Despite the “exemplary” activism demonstrated by the Court, the case is 
anything but an example of judicial daring. In fact, the Court’s veto is widely believed 
to have been not only in the best interests of the country’s political leadership which 
initiated the rapprochement process with the enthusiastic support of the interna-
tional community, but to have been also made under strong pressure from domestic 
groups and the powerful Armenian diaspora. The veto is indeed believed to have been 
directly engineered by government policy-makers as an exit strategy in case the events 
did not unfold in the most desired direction.
Finally, a slightly different yet very illustrative case of political alignment between the 
ruling power and the Court behind an apparently bold manifestation of judicial defi-
ance can be found in the 2011 decision of the Constitutional Council of Kazakhstan, 
rejecting the proposal on extending President Nazarbayev’s term without elections. 
48
Alec Stone Sweet,