A Sociological Approach to the Russian Constitution

This article promotes a distinctive sociological interpretation of the Russian Constitution. Much literature on Russian constitutional law is defined by the claim that the Constitution has little factual reality and limited foundation in society. This article challenges this view on two grounds. It argues that there are two deep-lying social processes that underlie the Constitution, and condition its evolution: the Constitution is shaped (a) by the importance of constitutional law for the stabilization of governance structures; (b) by the resultant relative autonomy of judicial practices, which means that legal exchanges (especially litigation) have formative impact on the constitutional order. On both grounds, the Russian Constitution is locked into cycles of societal norm construction. To understand the sociological linkages in which the constitution is located, we require a complex construction of society, and we need to observe how different practices within the legal system affect and even produce constitutional laws.