RUSSIAN
CONSTITUTIONAL COURT TO GIVE INTERPRETATION OF WHERE A RELIGIOUS
ORGANIZATION
MUST INDICATE ITS NAME
by
Sergei Chugunov
The
Constitutional
Court of the Russian Federation has accepted for consideration
an appeal filed
by lawyers of the Slavic Legal Center in the interests of the
religious
organization The Word of Life Church of Christians of
Evangelical Faith
(Pentecostals) of Dolgoprudnyi. In accordance with article 47.1
of the federal
constitutional law "On the Constitutional Court of the Russian
Federation," the Constitutional Court proposes to decide this
case without
conducting hearings. The Constitutional Court will issue a
ruling on the
results of a resolution of the case without conducting hearings.
The
reason for filing
an appeal in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation
was the evident
imprecision on the matter of whether part 8 of article 8 of the
federal law of
26 Sept. 1997 "On freedom of conscience and religious
associations"
and part 3 of article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative
Violations of Law of
the Russian Federation of 30 December 2001 are consistent with
article 28 and
part 1 of article 30 of the Constitution of the Russian
Federation.
The
appeal points out
that the standards of the law that are being challenged do not,
as a whole,
fulfill the requirements of precision, clarity, and
non-ambiguity of legal
standards. Point 8 of article 8 of the federal law of 26
September 1997
"On freedom of conscience and religious associations" stipulates
that
a religious organization is required to indicate its full name
while conducting
its activity. At the same time, we consider that the standard is
not worded
sufficiently precisely and clearly in that the standard does not
specify in
just which precise location the religious organization must post
information
with an indication of its full name. If a religious organization
conducts its
activity in one of many rooms in a building, must it indicate
its full name
only in the room being used or must the name be indicated at the
entrance to
the whole building.
The
aforementioned
defect of the standard being challenged permits law enforcers to
interpret it
arbitrarily and to arbitrarily apply the requirements for
posting the name of
religious organizations during their conduct of activity. Such
an
interpretation and application of the law leads to the fact that
religious
organizations are being held administratively responsible on the
basis of part
3 of article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Violations of
Law of the
Russian Federation for conducting their activity without
indicating their
official, complete name, even in those situations where the name
of a religious
organization was indicated, but the supervisory agency did not
agree that the
name had been displayed in the appropriate place.
We
recall that on 14
November 2019 the Russian Constitutional Court announced Order
No. 35P,* in
which the court determined the right of an owner of a residence
to provide for
a religious organization the possibility of conducting in that
residence
(residential building) worship services and other religious
rituals and
ceremonies and also to use its address as the address of the
religious
organization. The interests of the petitioner in that case were
also
represented by lawyers of the Slavic Legal Center, Vladimir
Riakhovsky and
Sergei Chugunov. (tr. by PDS, posted 6 July 2020)
*See article:
Russian
high court acknowledges spiritual needs
November 14, 2019
Editorial disclaimer: RRN does
not intend to certify the accuracy of information
presented in articles. RRN simply intends to certify the
accuracy of the English translation of the contents of the
articles as they appeared in news media of countries of
the former USSR.
If material is quoted, please give credit to the
publication from which it came. It is not necessary to credit
this Web page. If material is transmitted electronically, please
include reference to the URL,
http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.