Russia’s Cash Crunch Puts Judicial Reforms on Hold

There’s a saying legal reformers toss around often these days, in gloomy conversations marked by sighs and fretful frowns. “Nothing costs the state more,” they say, “than a cheap judicial system.”

They do not need to elaborate.

For five years now, Russia has been trying to cast off the repressive legal system it inherited from the Soviet Union. Politicians talk of forging a “law-based government” with a truly independent judiciary. They boast of courts that will defend, not quash, citizens’ rights.

Yet this year’s federal budget sets aside just $450 million for the courts. That’s less than 3% of the sum California attorneys bill their clients each year. It’s a fraction of the subsidies Russian coal miners receive.

By general consensus, it’s not enough.

Certainly not enough to fund fresh reforms. Perhaps not even enough to protect existing rights.

“How can the constitution itself work if its provisions are not backed up by funds?” Oleg E. Kutafin, dean of the Moscow State Legal Academy, told a Russian newspaper this month. “Laws and rights by themselves mean nothing if there isn’t an economic and social structure to enforce them.”

The cash crunch is already evident.

One retired judge said his court could not afford stamps for the postcards summoning witnesses to trial. A sitting judge complained that his verdicts felt “empty” because he could not hire bailiffs to enforce court rulings. Justice Minister Valentin A. Kovalev even announced that his judges are suffering “intellectual degradation” because they have no money for legal literature.

Meanwhile, at least 10% of Russia’s judgeships sit vacant--few qualified lawyers want to take up a job that pays just $100 a week. That salary looks good only to the court secretaries who double as stenographers, recording testimony by hand for a few cents an hour. Their secretarial duties count as apprenticeship, so as soon as they receive law diplomas, they’re eligible to serve as judges.

“And why not?” asked one secretary gunning for a judicial appointment. “After 12 years of working with court papers, I’m ready to decide people’s fates.”

Although judges are no longer regarded as stooges of the Communist Party, they get little respect and no prestige in today’s Russia. That lingering disdain for the courts seems, to some, as big an obstacle to reform as the chronic lack of funds.

“How can you build a law-based society when judges are not valued?” said former Judge Nikolai K. Baranovsky, who recently stepped down after 12 years on the bench. Noting that the shortage of judges has slapped courts with unmanageable caseloads, he added: “When the courthouse looks like a barn, all dirty and crowded and full of people shoving each other, what kind of relationship can citizens have with the justice system?”

Reformers like Baranovsky believe that Russians must come to consider the courts their champions rather than their oppressors if capitalism and democracy are to flourish.

For centuries, first the czars and then the Communists manipulated the Russian judiciary to serve their own greedy power grabs. Now the courts are finally inching toward serving, instead of subjugating, citizens. Yet few Russians seem to believe in the transformation.

Even a third-year law student scoffs at the profession he has chosen to enter. Sergei Klimov expects to earn good money in the booming new fields of trademark and international law. But he dismisses the Russian judicial system as clunky, corrupt--and irredeemable.

“No reforms will help,” Klimov said. “We don’t have enough money to make them work.”

To be sure, Russian leaders have yanked their judicial system a good distance from the Soviet era.

Communist Party bosses no longer call judges to dictate verdicts. And top government officials file lawsuits against the press rather than shutting down newspapers or jailing reporters.

But many of the reformist laws passed in the first wave of anti-Soviet euphoria have yet to take root. “Many of the changes have occurred only on paper,” parliamentary counsel Sergei A. Pashin said.

Take the presumption of innocence. Officially, it exists. Yet defense lawyers only recently stopped calling their clients “the guilty parties.” And criminal suspects still watch their trials from inside locked metal cages--tarred as convicts before a single witness approaches the stand.

Bail rights too exist on paper. Yet because “few people know about it,” most suspects languish for months in squalid, jam-packed detention centers, Justice Minister Kovalev acknowledged.

And how about a defendant’s right to remain silent?

The Russian constitution plainly states that suspects cannot be forced to incriminate themselves. But at a recent trial, the judge grilled two teenage suspects for 20 minutes before reminding them of this right.

Even then, he refused to take silence for an answer. “Why are you so quiet?” he berated one sullen defendant. “You are in a courtroom. . . . Answer the question!”

Defense lawyer Anya Khovanskaya did not bother to object when the judge began haranguing her client. She long ago lost her faith in constitutional guarantees.

“From the letter of the law, it would seem that everything’s normal, that we have enough rights,” Khovanskaya said. “But it doesn’t always work out that way here.”

Some actions proposed to remedy the system would be relatively cheap--such as granting defense lawyers the freedom to investigate cases.

As the law now stands, defense attorneys can seek out witnesses or dig up evidence only if prosecutors consent. If they do come up with an exonerating fact, prosecutors can refuse to insert it in the court file.

“Defense lawyers are not true participants in the process,” one downtrodden attorney, Vladimir Malyshev, said with a sigh. “We’re a subclass.”

Prosecutors, on the other hand, can issue search warrants at will. Kovalev is pressing for more judicial oversight of investigations. So far, however, the idea hasn’t caught on. Neither has the notion of double jeopardy. If a prosecutor loses a case, he can appeal--slamming the acquitted suspect back into the courtroom cage for a retrial.

Predictably, defendants rarely get off. According to Pashin, fewer than 1% of criminal cases in low-level “people’s courts” and fewer than 3% heard in regional courts result in acquittals. In contrast, the United States’ acquittal rate in criminal cases is about 17%.

The introduction of jury trials in several Russian districts in 1993 chipped away at prosecutors’ win streak. Jurors acquitted 19% of defendants and reduced charges in other cases, Pashin said.

Yet plans to expand jury trials beyond a dozen pilot regions have stalled. The government pleads poverty. So most cases continue to be decided by a judge and two “people’s assessors”--nicknamed “nodders” because they tend to nod right along with whatever the judge decides.

“It’s a complicated process to change people’s legal consciousness,” said renowned constitutional scholar Alexander M. Yakovlev.

In his own work teaching at a private law school, Yakovlev added, he has to remind his students that “the essence of law is noble, not harsh and menacing.”

That view of the law might seem strange to Americans fed up with tales of neighbors suing over barking dogs and of malpractice attorneys stalking hospital emergency rooms. But the very phenomena that Americans find so distasteful Russians are eager to imitate.

Yakovlev considers it “unfortunate” that his countrymen do not yet act like stereotypical Americans, “saying ‘I’ll sue you’ twice a day.” He wishes Russians felt confident enough in their courts--and their rights--to sue when their television sets explode or their doctors screw up.

Russian reformers also insist that Americans are nuts to gripe about a lawyer glut. With just 20,000 defense and civil attorneys for the entire country, Russia desperately needs more lawyers. So hearing that the United States has 17 times as many lawyers as Russia inspires not disgust, but jealousy.

“The more lawyers the better,” said Valentin V. Yershov, president of the Russian Legal Academy.

In their zest for reform, some Russians even revere the practice of ambulance-chasing as a sign of a trustworthy judiciary system.

Passing out business cards at accident sites is all but pointless in Russia, because fraud and malpractice lawsuits rarely bring in big bucks. Or, rather, such cases may win the victim a sizable award--but it’s unlikely he’ll ever see the cash. Just half of all Russian court verdicts are enforced.

Decrying that statistic as “shameful for any civilized country,” Kovalev has vowed to create a court police force to help victims collect. If it works, perhaps Russian lawyers will start chasing ambulances.

But reformers don’t believe that will happen soon. The judicial system received even less money than arts and culture in this year’s federal budget--a sign that court reform no longer ranks as a government priority.

“I used to be so optimistic,” retired Judge Baranovsky said. “I really believed in the reforms. Now, I can’t say a thing.”