For an hour and a half straight, in a single hearing, the same judge heard the case.
At the start, he read out a paragraph from a Supreme Court ruling as the decisive argument. In favor of my opponent. I did not object: the practice really was in his favor, and that was fair.
Toward the end, I cited Supreme Court practice too, on a different episode of the same case, on the exact same question of law. And I heard: “We do not have binding precedent here. Every case is decided on its own.”
One judge. One hearing. Two opposite attitudes toward the very same source — depending on who it benefited at that moment.
I have seen this before. And I will see it again. So I worked through it properly: where the real boundary lies between “there is no precedent” and “uniform practice is mandatory” — and what to do about it when it stings.
What the Law Actually Says
Let me start with an honest admission: in this scene, the court is formally right. Russia genuinely has no system of binding judicial precedent.
Article 126 of the Constitution describes the Supreme Court modestly: it oversees the courts and issues clarifications on matters of judicial practice. It does not “create rules.” It simply clarifies.
But “clarifies” does not mean “can be forgotten whenever inconvenient.” That is where things get interesting.
Three Floors, Where Practice Is Binding to Different Degrees
Picture three floors.
The first floor — the Constitutional Court. The only one that is genuinely binding, without exception. The law says so directly, with no “may”: its rulings are binding across the entire territory of Russia — for courts, officials, companies, and citizens alike (Art. 6 of the Federal Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court).
The second floor — the Plenum of the Supreme Court. And here is the freshest development. A month ago, I would have written: formally not a source of law, and whether its clarifications are binding was a matter of debate. But a week ago, on 4 September 2026, the law changed (Federal Constitutional Law of 04.08.2026 No. 3-FKZ): where the Plenum used to simply “issue clarifications,” it now issues “guiding clarifications,” with an established priority over the rulings of lower courts. This covers Plenum resolutions specifically.
To be honest: a single word in the statute will not make a judge write “I ignored the Plenum” — nobody writes that. The usual way around it is not silence, but distinguishing the facts: “the claimant’s arguments do not hold, because the parties’ legal relationship is of a different nature.” That maneuver is lawful, and the amendment does not undo it. What it does provide is something else: the argument that “the court was obligated to address your reference to the Plenum” used to be a debatable point out of a textbook. Now it is a direct quotation of the statute.
There is also a path to the very top — the Presidium of the Supreme Court, by way of supervisory review: departing from a Plenum position is expressly named there as an independent ground for reversal (Art. 308.8 of the Arbitration Procedure Code, Art. 391.9 of the Code of Civil Procedure). But only a handful of cases actually make it there. In 2024, more than 2,600 supervisory complaints were filed — only a few dozen were actually heard at a session. In criminal cases, where the statistics are most transparent, the chance of a case being referred for hearing is about 0.6%. More than 99% are screened out at the entry point, by a single judge, without any examination of the case. After the September amendment, this is no longer the only lever: courts are now obligated, as a general rule, to follow the Plenum’s position — not merely out of fear of the rare supervisory review.
The third floor — rulings of the Supreme Court and of district cassation courts on individual cases. An act concerning one dispute, not a general rule — the amendment does not reach this far. Binding only on the parties to that particular case. Yet lower courts cite such rulings almost as if they were statute — not because they must, but because they do not want to be overturned. Within its own circuit, a court tries to decide similar disputes consistently; and a divergence in practice between circuits is a frequent reason for the Supreme Court’s Judicial Panel to take up a case for review.
It is important not to confuse the actual objection to the scene described at the start. It is not that the judge was obligated to blindly follow someone else’s ruling — that would itself be binding precedent, which does not exist. Nor is it that he was entitled to find one ruling persuasive and another not — weighing acts differently is entirely lawful. The real problem is different: in the first episode, the judge openly relied on a ruling. In the second, he did not explain the difference — he took cover behind a general phrase about the absence of precedent. Had he meant that phrase seriously, it would have closed off the first citation too. Either there is no precedent at all, in which case the first citation was pointless — or it sometimes works, in which case explain why not this time. The issue is not the outcome. The issue is the inconsistent explanation.
Where the Loophole Is Hiding
Here is a detail that few people notice — and after the September changes, it has only gotten more interesting. The law says that a court ruling “may contain” references to the Plenum, the Presidium, and case-law reviews (Part 4, Art. 170 of the Arbitration Procedure Code). Not “must.” May.
Hence the gap: following the Plenum’s position is now a substantive obligation for the court — but writing about it in the ruling remains a right, not a duty. Wanted to cite it — cited it. Did not want to — stayed silent, and formally broke no rule.
That is how the double standard I opened with is born. A convenient position goes into the ruling as extra weight. An inconvenient one simply goes unmentioned. And increasingly, this is no longer really about the Plenum — the September amendment has already made that route risky — but about rulings on individual cases, the third floor, where there was never any binding force to begin with.
What This Looks Like in Practice
An example, with the details changed but the substance intact.
A dispute over a debt. The defendant argues the limitation period has expired. The court agrees — and cites, in support, a Supreme Court position on when exactly a limitation period is considered to have expired. Logical enough.
But the claimant had cited a different Supreme Court position: that the limitation period is interrupted if the debtor acknowledged the debt. The ruling simply does not mention it. Not rejected, not explained — as if it had never been raised.
A similar story, in a labor dispute. The court cites the Plenum: if an employee delayed in going to court, that is grounds to deny the claim. The employee, however, had cited a different clause of the very same resolution — about valid reasons for missing the deadline, which the court is obligated to examine on its own initiative, without a separate request. Same document. The very next paragraph. Silence in the ruling.
Notice this: the violation is quiet, not loud. The court isn’t disputing the Plenum — it’s simply not mentioning part of its text. And that alone breaches the duty to give reasons for a refusal (Part 4, Art. 170 of the Arbitration Procedure Code), regardless of whether this is about the Plenum or not. It’s the silence, not an open dispute, that’s the typical way around an inconvenient point: openly disputing a guiding clarification has become risky since the September amendment, but quietly failing to notice a paragraph remains, as before, the easiest path.
A coincidence? Once, perhaps. But this is systemic. The law does not require a court to examine every argument in equal depth. It requires only one thing: do not stay silent about the position you yourself decided to rely on.
How to Fight Back
The main rule: do not argue with the court on the ground of “we have precedent” — you will lose that argument immediately, since the court is formally correct. Argue not about precedent. Argue that the court is obligated to explain its decisions.
Keep written closing submissions from the first hearing on — for your own record. Do not sit down to write them at the last moment. Start the document immediately and add to it after every hearing: what you agree with, what you do not, and why — point by point, with exact citations. By the time of closing arguments, submit the document to the court and ask that it be attached to the case file. Then the record will contain not what the judge happened to remember, but a documented position. This offers no guarantee: an experienced court can dispose of even a detailed submission with a single phrase such as “the remaining arguments have been examined and are dismissed as based on a misreading of the substantive rules,” and cassation courts accept that formula for years running. But without the written text, you will not even have that modest foothold. A written position is not a trap for the judge — it is insurance for you.
Record the argument in writing, word for word. Not “there is such-and-such practice,” but an exact quotation: “I ask the court to take into account the position set out in paragraph such-and-such of Plenum Resolution No. …” An oral argument at the hearing — the court has every moral right not to hear it. A written one, no longer: if the court fails to address it and does not explain the refusal, that is a breach of the law — the court is obligated to state the reasons for rejecting a party’s argument (Clause 2, Part 4, Art. 170 of the Arbitration Procedure Code, and Clause 2, Part 4, Art. 198 of the Code of Civil Procedure). This ground for reversal comes up in practice far more often than the rare “breach of uniform practice”: it only takes an ordinary cassation appeal, not the Presidium of the Supreme Court. And where the argument concerns the Plenum specifically, openly disputing it after the September amendment has become risky for a court — quietly failing to notice it remains, as before, the easier path.
Show the court its own inconsistency. If, in the same case, the court relied on a Supreme Court position once but did not in a neighboring episode, say so directly in your complaint. This is not legal theory. It is a simple question: why did one document suit the court, while the next paragraph of that same document did not? The court, as a rule, has no answer — and the higher court sees that too.
Know the weight of what you are wielding. A first-instance ruling is a weak argument, even once it has entered into force (I covered this in detail in the note on how convenient court rulings get made). A ruling of a district cassation court, a Supreme Court panel, or the Presidium on a specific case carries more weight, though it, too, is formally binding only on the parties. A Plenum position has, since September 2026, been expressly labeled guiding — the heaviest weight there is, short of a ruling of the Constitutional Court. The higher the source, the harder it becomes for a court to pretend it never heard of it.
If it comes down to principle, remember the Constitutional Court. It has repeatedly held that equality before the law and the courts (Art. 19 of the Constitution) works only if the same rule is understood and applied consistently — otherwise it stops being equality and becomes a lottery. Not as an iron-clad citation to one specific case, but as a framework: opposite rulings on similar facts conflict not only with common sense, but with this constitutional principle.
For cases where the stakes genuinely justify it, keep the uniform-practice provision in reserve. The odds of reaching the Presidium of the Supreme Court are slim. But it’s worth working the formula itself — “a breach of uniform interpretation and application of legal rules” (Art. 308.8 of the Arbitration Procedure Code, Art. 391.9 of the Code of Civil Procedure) — into an ordinary cassation appeal too: not as the formal ground (that belongs to the Presidium), but as reinforcement. It shows that the divergence is not a minor detail of the case, but something the law itself treats as serious enough to overturn a ruling at the very top.
In Short
- Russia genuinely has no system of binding precedent. Each case is formally examined afresh.
- But since 4 September 2026, the Plenum’s clarifications have officially been labeled “guiding.” A court can no longer ignore them at its own discretion — this is now an obligation, not a gesture of good will.
- Rulings on individual cases — by Supreme Court panels, by district cassation courts — remain binding only on the parties to that case. The double standard has not gone anywhere here.
- The main lever against a court’s selective memory is not an argument about “precedent,” but a demand that it explain a rejection. A court is always obligated to give reasons for dismissing an argument — whether the matter concerns the Plenum or an ordinary case.
- There are no guarantees: an experienced court can dispose of even a precise written argument with one boilerplate phrase, and cassation courts usually accept it. But without a written record, you will have nothing at all to point back to — an oral argument, the court is entitled simply not to notice.
Russia truly has no system of binding precedent. But a court does have an obligation to explain why the very same document works one day and suddenly stops working the next. And that obligation — not the myth of precedent — is the one worth holding on to, when a judge suddenly forgets everything.
Another look at how convenient practice gets manufactured, rather than merely applied: Pocket Lawsuits: Manufacturing Convenient Precedent.
When no explanation can be gotten out of a court by any ordinary means — on what to do next, I have written separately: The Hippo Effect: An Alternative Defense Technique.
That, essentially, is what I do: I make sure the law works the same way for everyone — regardless of who benefits from selective amnesia at any given moment.