MOSCOW, June 28 (RAPSI) — A plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has proposed to submit to the State Duma a bill that would allow judges to be assigned a higher grade without taking into account the place of work of the judge and without observing the sequence of assignment of grades.

The draft law proposes to amend the Law On the Status of Judges in the Russian Federation.

A judge who has made a significant contribution to the administration of justice, who has special merits to the judiciary, may be assigned a higher qualification class without observing the sequence of assignment, the period of stay in the assigned qualification class and regardless of the top qualification class provided for the position such a judge occupies by the national High Qualification Board of Judges on the proposal of the Chairman of the Russian Supreme Court, the document reads.

Grades, from the ninth to the first and highest, are assigned depending on the level of knowledge of the judge, practical experience, the results of work, professional aptitude and moral qualities. Such a sequence of qualification classes forms a kind of judicial "table of ranks." The assignment of a qualification class to a judge is directly dependent on the position he or she fills in the court of the respective level.

The authors of the initiative indicate that, having reached the maximum possible grade, depending on the level of the court, the judge to a certain extent loses the motivation to improve his or her level of qualification, and with a significant work experience in the field of justice, to continue working in this area.