Yeltsin signed new legislation Friday empowering the court he suspended after last autumn's parliamentary uprising, albeit with a new set of rules that will limit the court's once enormous political powers.
But before the 19-member court can resume ruling on the constitutionality of laws and presidential decrees, six new justices have to be appointed by Yeltsin and approved by the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council.
Court spokeswoman Emilia Kharlanova said that the president has until Aug. 15 to present to the legislature a list of six appointees from a shortlist of 18 candidates approved in parliamentary hearings earlier this year.
While Kharlanova said she believed the Federation Council would quickly approve the candidates, she said it was unlikely for the court to convene until at least the middle of September. The court's current 13 justices went on a two-month vacation Monday.
The court will be significantly different from the body Yeltsin closed down after it refused to approve his disbanding of the old Supreme Soviet, which ended with the bombardment of the White House in October.
For one thing, the new court will no longer have the right to take on cases on its own initiative. For another, the six new justices, and any justices that replace the 13 current justices in the future, will be appointed for only 12 years and not for life as previously.
Yeltsin and his opponents in the legislature agreed to a compromise law so that the court would begin work on what Gennady Gurevich, deputy chairman of the court's secretariat, called "a huge number of cases."
Topping the dockets are two potentially controversial cases. One is an appeal by acting Public Prosecutor Alexei Ilyushenko to overrule the parliament's amnesty of the leaders of the uprising by the former legislature. Another is an appeal by a number of opposition deputies to review the constitutionality of Yeltsin's recent decree on emergency measures to fight organized crime.
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