The International Financial Centre“Astana” as an Example of the Common Law Implant in the Constitutional Scheme of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Abstract

The existence of the Court of the International Financial Centre “Astana” is a challenge to both legal theory and practice. This challenge concerns the status of the judges of this court, who apply the precedents of the English courts in their case law. This unique practice of letting the territory of a sovereign country enforce the principles coming from a completely different system of law is described by legal academics and commentators in various ways: as a reception, acculturation, transformation, implementation, migration of the law, continuity and replicability of the law. In this context, we analyse the very nature of the financial centre “Astana” and particularly one of its most prominent institutions, namely the Court of the International Financial Centre “Astana” presenting it as a process of its integration into the framework of the Kazakh constitution of the autonomous legal system within the economic zone whose boundaries are determined by the constitution and the constitutional law governing the roles played by the international financial centre.