Constitutionalization of the Procedural Form for Adjudicating Bankruptcy Cases

The constitutional foundations of the institute of insolvency (bankruptcy) have not yet received detailed and substantive attention in Russian science. This is due to objective reasons: the Constitution of the Russian Federation does not mention bankruptcy as it is, and the bankruptcy legislation lacks a chapter or article dedicated to the basic principles of legal regulation of this institution. Nevertheless, the dynamics of the development of social relations in the field of bankruptcy, legal conflicts, and fundamental problems of law enforcement practice bring to the fore the question of the means to achieve the completeness of constitutional and legal regulation. There is an objective need to constitutionalize the procedural order for bankruptcy cases. However, this circumstance raises a number of questions for legal science: concerning the understanding of constitutionalization as a legal phenomenon, its essential features in social relations in the field of bankruptcy, and the role of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and other judicial bodies. The growing relevance of the issue of constitutionalizing the procedural form for adjudicating bankruptcy cases is evidenced by the increasingly frequent reference of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to the issues of the constitutional foundations of social relations in the field of insolvency. Summarizing the role of the constitutional justice body, the author concludes that the strategic task of constitutional control is to form judicial doctrines of bankruptcy law — a system of methodological approaches that ensure the effectiveness and constitutional validity of law enforcement. The paper also pays attention on trends in judicial arbitration practice in bankruptcy cases, in which the process of constitutionalization is becoming more specific.