The Judicial Branch Is the Third Branch, or Why Are There No Laws for Judges?: Interview with Valentin Kuznetsov and Sergei Pashin by Irina Smirnova

Abstract

Do judges know the law? This question, somewhat strange at first glance, occurs to anyone who comes into contact with Russian jurisprudence. The legally illiterate—sometimes utterly absurd—rulings handed down by the courts confirm the view that most judges neither know the law nor want to know it, and the sum total of their legal knowledge remains at the level of the man in the street. To all criticism, however, they have one unvarying response: no one can instruct a judge. Even the law?