Constitutional Justice Bodies and Prosecutor’s Office in Ensuring the Unity of the Russian Legal Space

The article is devoted to the problem of the formation of a unified Russian legal space in the activities of the prosecutor’s office and constitutional justice bodies (constitutional court, constitutional councils) in the process of its reform. The objectives of the article are to define the concepts of the legal space and its unity; to find solutions to the problems of prompt consideration of cases previously subordinated to the abolished constitutional courts of the subjects of the Russian Federation; to determine the areas of interaction between the bodies of constitutional justice and the prosecutor’s office; to identify the vector of development of the prosecutor’s office in constitutional proceedings. The use of methods of comparative analysis and comparative law has made it possible to propose ways to improve the activities of constitutional justice and the prosecutor’s office in the judicial review of certain categories of cases. The analysis of the prosecutor’s participation in lawmaking and supervision of the legal acts’ legality in retrospective and prospective aspects, the use of statistical tools for reporting on the prosecutor’s work made it possible to determine the role and importance of the designated functional areas of the prosecutor’s office in shaping the legal framework of the state, to trace their development in dynamics. Using the example of changes in constitutional legislation, the strengthening of institutional cooperation between the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the Prosecutor’s Office to filter legislation and strengthen public law and order is illustrated. The authors have accumulated several options for optimizing the activities of constitutional justice bodies to consider cases previously subordinated to the abolished constitutional courts of the subjects of the Russian Federation, from opening “presences” of the Constitutional Court in federal districts to uniting judges of the subjects of the Russian Federation in representative offices of the constitutional courts of the subjects of the Russian Federation (“intersubjective constitutional courts”). Some of the options for such optimization have been proposed by the authors for discussion by the legal community for the first time. The presented conclusions and proposals made it possible to substantiate the need for: a doctrinal definition of the concepts of “constitutional legality” and “constitutional supervision”; mandatory participation of the prosecutor in the consideration of certain categories of cases in constitutional proceedings at the level of subjects of the Russian Federation; the need to improve the legal status of the prosecutor’s office in the field of constitutional relations.