President of Russia: Meeting with Supreme Court President Vyacheslav Lebedev

October 21, 2014 Vladimir Putin met with Supreme Court President Vyacheslav Lebedev to discuss the functioning of the supreme judicial authority after the merger of the Supreme Court and the Higher Arbitration Court.

V. Lebedev noted: “The Supreme Court has been in operation since August 6; all the judicial divisions and assemblies of the Supreme Court have been formed and the court is functioning in its regular mode, reviewing cases within reasonable timeframes. Apart from reviewing cases, we have drafted several resolutions for the Supreme Court Plenum and are conducting a comparative analysis of certain legal issues specified in the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia and the former Higher Arbitration Court. We need to do this to achieve uniformity in judicial practice. We are conducting both judicial practice and analysis and research. The draft law is directed primarily at optimising the work of judges in the entire arbitration court system and at simplifying legal proceedings, the revision procedure, to be precise. The draft law envisages that in about 40 percent of all cases the judge will only make the judicial decree rather than a full reasoned judgment. This would largely relieve the judges of work I would say they do not have to do”.

According to the Federal Constitutional Law "On the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation", signed by the President of Russia on February 5, 2014, the residence of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is the city of St. Petersburg. Currently is approved the concept of the construction of buildings to house the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in St. Petersburg.

In the period from September 23 to October 23, 2013 on the website of the Presidential Library there has been a public discussion of architectural concepts of construction of buildings to ensure the relocation of the Supreme and Supreme Arbitration courts of the Russian Federation to St. Petersburg.