Violation of Rules on Exclusive Jurisdiction of the Court as a Ground for Refusal to Recognize and Enforce Foreign Judgments in Russia

This graduate paper is aimed at considering the issue of violation of exclusive competence of Russian arbitrazh courts raised during proceedings on recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment. The main objectives of the paper are: (a) studying of the definition, sources and grounds of exclusive competence; (b) examining the scope of exclusive competence under Russian law; (c) analysis of some aspects of exclusive competence as they are set out in Russian law; (d) determining of directions of further development of rules on exclusive competence in Russia. Based on this research the following conclusions were made: firstly, exclusive jurisdiction is the competence of a defined court under national legislation and an international treaty to consider certain cases which are simultaneously got excluded from general international jurisdiction; secondly, exclusive competence is usually justified by the concepts of state sovereignty, public order and the principle of effective administration of justice; thirdly, the list of aspects of exclusive competence prescribed in Article 248 of the Arbitration Procedural Code of the Russian Federation is not exhaustive since there are some other aspects not specifically mentioned in the Article, moreover, exclusive jurisdiction over certain kinds of disputes can be changed by an international treaty; fourthly, exclusive jurisdiction over the disputes on the intellectual property rights shall be limited by disputes concerning the validity of such rights; fifthly, when applying the rules on exclusive jurisdiction over the disputes concerning immovable property, they must be limited by disputes arisen out of rights in rem, and the difference between definitions of immovable property under national law of various states must be taken into account; sixthly, the most actual problems include: reduction of extraordinary aspects of exclusive jurisdiction and introduction of other forms of control over the competence of foreign courts.