Abuse of the constitutional freedom of assembly: shifting forms and the case for a purposive criterion

It is established that targeted prohibitions in Federal Law No. 54-FZ of 19 June 2004 "On Assemblies, Rallies, Demonstrations, Marches, and Picketing", enacted in response to specific forms of bad-faith conduct, do not provide a durable response to abuse of right. A consistent pattern has been identified: the 2012 requirement of a minimum distance between individual picketers prompted a shift to «picket queues» (sequential picketing), which were in turn prohibited in 2020. At the same time, a further form of abuse emerged – the disguising of public assemblies as formats falling outside the scope of the law. It is concluded that each targeted prohibition does not eliminate the "grey zone" of abuse but merely displaces its boundaries, since it addresses the external features of conduct rather than its purpose. Alongside this, an independent form of abuse has been identified, in which the divergence of purposes is most evident – the filing of notifications without any intent to hold an assembly. On the basis of a purposive criterion, the author proposes a procedure for characterising abuse of right and formulates a corresponding proposal to supplement Federal Law No. 54-FZ