Selective retroactivity: criteria for determining the moment of declaring a law null and void in a Russian administrative judicial proceedings

Abstract

The subject. Any legal order is based on a strict hierarchy of normative acts, built according to their legal force. This hierarchy has been ensured by, among other things, exercising judicial review. In Russia, a normative act can be challenged on the grounds that it contradicts laws of greater legal force, except for the Russian Constitution, in the procedure provided for in Chapter 21 of the Russian Code of Administrative Proceedings. In doing so, one of the crucial questions to be decided in the course of judicial review of normative acts is the determination of the moment when a normative act contradicting a normative act of greater legal force ceases to be valid. This temporal aspect is extremely important because it determines whether individuals whose rights have been violated by law enforcement acts (acts involving application of the law) based on a null and void law are entitled to seek judicial relief. The purpose of the article is to confirm or refute hypothesis about the permissibility of a situation in which unlawful normative act remains valid for a certain time. The methodology of research includes formal legal analysis and interpretation of the norms of the Russian Code of Administrative Proceedings, decisions of the Russian Constitutional Court and other courts.

Keywords

• judicial review
• retroactivity
• administrative judicial proceeding
• null and void law
• retroactive force