Theoretical basis
In order to determine which court to contact, you need to understand two important concepts: jurisdiction and jurisdiction.
This is necessary in order to resolve two issues:
- whether the resolution of a particular dispute falls within the jurisdiction of the court (jurisdiction);
- which specific court is required to consider this case (jurisdiction).
The legal concept of “jurisdiction” comes from the verb “to be in charge” and in civil procedural law means the subject competence of courts, arbitration courts, arbitration courts, notaries, bodies for the consideration and resolution of labor disputes, other state bodies and organizations that have the right to consider and resolve certain legal issues . That is, jurisdiction refers to civil cases that these courts are competent to consider and resolve on the merits.
There are several types of jurisdiction:
- Exclusive jurisdiction - a dispute arising from civil, family, housing, environmental, and other legal relations is considered directly only by the court and cannot be resolved on the merits by other bodies.
- Alternative jurisdiction - a dispute of a legal nature can be legally resolved not only by a court, but also by another non-judicial body (administrative, notarial, arbitration).
- Conditional jurisdiction - for a certain category of disputes or other legal issues, compliance with the preliminary out-of-court procedure for their consideration acts as a necessary condition for their jurisdiction to the court.
- Jurisdiction of cases, determined by the connection of claims.
The jurisdiction of all civil cases by the courts is established by Article 22 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation.
Jurisdiction is an institution (a set of legal norms) that regulates the relevance of cases within the jurisdiction of the courts to the jurisdiction of a specific court of the judicial system for their consideration at first instance.
In accordance with Article 4 of the Federal Law “On the Judicial System of the Russian Federation” dated December 31, 1996 No. 1-FKZ, in the Russian Federation there are federal courts, constitutional (statutory) courts and magistrates of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, which make up the judicial system of the Russian Federation.
There are also two important concepts that we will need to resolve our issue: generic jurisdiction and territorial jurisdiction.
Generic jurisdiction refers to the jurisdiction of civil cases by courts at a certain level of the judicial system.
All civil cases, from the point of view of their generic jurisdiction, can be divided into four types:
- cases subject to trial by magistrates at first instance;
- cases within the jurisdiction of the district courts of first instance;
- cases within the jurisdiction of the first instance to the supreme courts of the republic, regional, regional courts, city courts of the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, courts of the autonomous region, courts of autonomous districts;
- cases within the jurisdiction of the first instance to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
Generic jurisdiction is determined by the nature (gender) of the case, the subject of the dispute, and sometimes the subjective composition of the material legal relationship (for example, when adopting children by foreigners).
In addition to the type of case, there is also the territory in which a particular court operates. The attribute of the territory of operation of the court allows you to determine which of the similar courts (out of many district or courts of the constituent entities of the Federation) has jurisdiction over a given case. This type of jurisdiction is called territorial (local) jurisdiction. The rules of territorial (local) jurisdiction allow the distribution of civil cases for consideration at first instance between similar courts.
In the theory of civil procedural law, territorial jurisdiction is divided into subtypes:
- general territorial jurisdiction (Article 28 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation);
- jurisdiction at the choice of the plaintiff (Article 29 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation);
- exclusive jurisdiction (Article 30 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation);
- contractual jurisdiction (Article 32 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation);
- jurisdiction for connection of cases (Article 31 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation).
The territorial jurisdiction of the case depends on the administrative territory in which the court operates.
