Legal defense of foreign citizens and non-citizens’ economic rights and interests from criminal offense and other incidents

Abstract

The paper analyzes issues of defense of foreign citizens’ and apatrides’ economic rights and interests from criminal offense and wrongful acts within the Russian Federation. Due to situation of political strain, fueled by refugee crisis, obviously national legal system faces new challenges in maintaining human values within its borders. The key idea of the paper is a legal capacity to renege from providing the non-citizens of national equality, addressing the lex personalis i.e., the law of the alien’s home country for meaningful rights and interests’ defense. The certainty is based on the fact that the legislation of alien’s home country could not always correspond with the Russian one and it could not be read as a decline in alien’s legal status. Even a superficial view reveals lots of theoretical and enforcement issues ranging from providing equal defense from criminal or administrative offence to defense from maladministration. Despite the distinctions in national legal systems, common European trend is aimed at highest possible defense of non-citizens’ and apatrides’ economic interests. Thus, Russian legal system admits feasible aliens’ adjective law limitations as a retaliatory measure for Russian citizens’ rights limitation abroad. Authors push for balancing both personal and public interests when determining the legal defense of economic interests of non-citizens in accordance with European practice.