legal acts has been adopted in Russia, which is common in several countries. Therefore, the legislative system is not fixed in any act in a complete form. However, separate norms establishing the hierarchy of acts are still available in various sources. With regard to such norms, as well as provisions of the jurisprudence, the schematic system of the normative legal acts in Russia can be explained in the following chart.
An act with a lower legal force should not contradict an act with a higher legal force. If such a contradiction arises, the act with a higher legal force shall be applied.[16]
1.2. Requisites of Legal acts
In order to be able to precisely identify a specific legal act, the legal acts shall have the following requisites:[17]
i) The type of a legal act
Main types of legal acts: a federal law, a decree, a decision, an order, a command, an instruction, an informative letter.
ii) Adopting body
An adopting body for federal constitutional laws and federal laws is not specified; only the Parliament of the Russian Federation can adopt these acts. Similarly, an adopting body for regional laws is not specified.
iii) The name
Legal acts do not have official abbreviations in Russia. At the same time, in practice the acts that are widely used acquire informal short names. The short names can appear as abbreviations (for example, FL on Joint Stock Companies is called “FL on JSC”).
iv) The date of adoption
The date of adoption of the federal law is the date of the adoption of the law by the State Duma.
v) The number
Sometimes federal laws are simply named by number, for example "law No. 99-FL". However, this method of naming the law does not allow accurate identification of the law. The issue is that the number 1-FZ is assigned to each law adopted, as the first in a row in the current year. The next law that is adopted is assigned the number 2-FZ, and so on. With this method, since 1993, 21 federal laws were adopted with the number 99-FZ. Therefore, for the unambiguous identification of the law, in addition to the number, it is also necessary to know the date (or at least the year) of its adoption. In practice, for reference on a concrete act, it is recommended to use five requisites at a time: the type of the act, the adopted body, the name, the date of adoption, and the number.
vi) The date of the last amendments (edition)
The date of the last amendments is usually specified in brackets.
vii) The source of official publication
The sources of official publication of the federal laws, the acts of the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation are:
“The Russian Newspaper”
“The Collection of the Legislation of the Russian Federation”
“The Parliamentary Newspaper”
The official internet portal of legal information, at the following website: pravo.gov.ru
The international treaties within the EEU and decisions of the Eurasian Economic Commission are published on the following website: eaeunion.org
The source of official publication is usually separated from the other requisites with a double backslash. In practice, it is usually not indicated.
The reference on a legal act with the use of all its requisites looks like the following:
The Federal Law dated February 8, 1998 No. 14-FZ (edited on 05.05.2014) "On Limited Liability Companies" // "The Collection of the Legislation of the RF", 16.02.1998, No. 7, page 785.
2. The Constitutional Basics of Entrepreneurship
The Constitution of the Russian Federation is at the top of the pyramid of the acts, and it regulates entrepreneurship. It was adopted by national vote on December 12, 1993.
2.1. The Legal Features of the Constitution
The main legal features of the Constitution are specified in part 1 of Article 15 of the Constitution of Russia:
2.1.1. The Highest Legal Force
The highest legal force of the Constitution means that its norms have a priority over the norms of any other legal acts acting in the territory of Russia. All other acts shall correspond to the Constitution. If a norm enshrined in a federal law contradicts with the provisions of the Constitution, the norm of the Constitution shall apply.
2.1.2. The Direct operation
The direct operation of the Constitution means that it is possible to directly refer to its norms for the purposes of legally justifying one’s position.
2.1.3. The Application in the Whole Territory of Russia
Despite the fact that republics, which are also called «states» in the Constitution, are part of the Russian Federation, the Constitution also acts in the territory of these subjects of the federation, without any exceptions.
2.2. The Main Provisions of the Constitution, Regulating the Entrepreneurial Activities
In the Russian Federation:
i. Freedom of economic activity is provided (Article 8),
ii. The unity of economic space, free movement of goods, services, and financial means are guaranteed (Article 8),
iii. The support for competition is guaranteed (Article 8), the activity aimed at monopolization and unfair competition is forbidden (Article 34),
iv. The equality of private, state, municipal, and other forms of ownership is established (Article 8),
v. The possibility of finding of land and other natural resources in a private property is guaranteed (Article 9),
vi. The equality of all people before the law and the court is guaranteed (Article 19),
vii. Everyone has the right to free use of his abilities and property for entrepreneurial and other economic activity, not prohibited by law (Article 34),
viii. No one may be deprived of one’s property, with the exception of a court decision. Forced confiscation of the property may be carried out only for state needs, on conditions of preliminary and complete compensation (Article 35),
ix. Everyone has the right to state compensation for the damage caused by unlawful actions (or inaction) of bodies of state authority and their officials (Article 53).
3. International Legal Acts
3.1. The Main International Treaties which the Russian Federation is a party to
According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the generally recognized principles and norms of international law, and the international treaties of the Russian Federation, are
Please see below for a more detailed on the correlation between federal and regional acts.
Legal Directory Systems "Consultant Plus" and «Garant» may be used for searching for the texts in Russian of the legal acts of the Russian Federation. The database of these systems is available on the official websites as well: http://www.consultant.ru/online/ and http://www.garant.ru/.
