A Careful U-Turn: The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on the Place of Local Self-Government within the Framework of the Unified Public Government System

The article provides analysis of one of the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in 2023, devoted to the question of clarifying the place of local self-government in the unified system of public power. On the basis of a private example of solid municipal waste management, the Court raises the question of the problem of the established law enforcement practice of apportioning responsibility among public authorities, where the main burden is placed on the municipal level. On the basis of the material, the author concludes that there are some new legal positions formulated in the decision that may allow to apply the emerging systemic relationships of constitutional provisions more accurately. The examples of such legal positions are the prohibition of establishing a hierarchy of public authority and the necessity of applying the mutual principle of responsibility of levels of public authority.