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Happy 2008 New Year, our dear readers!
A new year always means new plans and new projects. Thus, our journal has entered the third year of its publication with high hopes and big plans.
We will certainly continue covering the activity of the
European Court of Human Rights and everything that

relates to this international institution.
I earnestly hope that the newly elected State Duma will ratify the Protocol No. 14 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and in the near future this document, already signed by the Russian Federation, will take legal effect.
After that, it will become possible to start working upon new Protocol (No. 15), which will take notice of all comments, which were accumulated not only by the Russian Federation, but also by the member States of the Council of Europe, as well as by the European Court itself.
Two momentous events will take place in the European Court in the end of January of the new year.
There will be the ceremony of the opening of the Judicial Year at the European Court, and we will cover this event in the journal.
There will be election of the Vice-President of the European Court and Presidents of the Sections.
Election of the new leaders of the European Court are especially essential for Russia, since there will be election of the President of the Section, which handles cases in applications against Russia. Considering the rotation among the judges, which occurred lately, election of the President of the «Russian» Section is as important the election of the President of the European Court that took place a year ago.
We would like to hope that the office of the President of the Section that handles most cases in applications against Russia would be occupied by a judge elected from the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. We will also cover the event in our journal.
For the first time during almost ten-year participation of Russia in the functioning of the European Court the Court’s Grand Chamber admitted cases in applications of Russians against their State. Translation of the Chamber judgment in one of those cases was published in our journal: the Sergey Zolotukhin v. Russia case concerning «double jeopardy» issue (see the 9th issue of the journal, 2007) has been referred to the Grand Chamber for examination upon request of the Agent of the Russian Federation
before the European Court, Mme Veronika Milinchuk.
We shall keep publishing translations of Chamber judgments and decisions – notably those delivered by the Grand Chamber – in applications against Russia and other member States of the Council of Europe.
In this issue of the journal, we direct your attention to the article by councilors of the Russian Federation Constitutional Court on the supervisory review procedure in Russian courts in the light of the Russian Federation Constitutional Court’s Judgment of 5 February 2007.
In the next coming issues of the journal, we shall familiarise our readers, both Russian and foreign, with the latest novelties in the Russian Federation Code of Civil Procedure that related to the supervisory review procedure and shall publish a commentary by the experts to those novelties. The article continues publication of a series of materials related to the functioning of the judicial supervisory review in the Russian legal system.
As before, each issue of the journal will have articles by eminent jurists, practitioners and scholars, on matters related to the European Court.
I hope that our journal is of interest to you, and we will do our best that from issue to issue the journal will become even more informative and full of content.

Vitaly Portnov

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