Initial responses by Putin were to declare a ‘dictatorship of the law’, thus making clear his intention to reassert legality over a chaotic, fragmented system that strayed from the adopted constitution in 1993 to varying degrees depending on the region in question.  To counter corruption among the judiciary, patently the status of the judiciary needed to be raised.  Pay grades were raised four fold, and to counter the backlog of cases their numbers were raised from 16,000 to 20,000 (Sakwa; 2008, p75).  Obviously this necessitated an increase in state revenue in order to properly fund this expansion.  This provided an incentive to avoid taking bribes, namely from the organised criminal elements operating in considerable numbers and aided by a decade of relative lawlessness.

However issues remain as to the extent to which these reforms have taken effect.  Is his final press conference Putin described the fight against corruption as one of the most ‘wearying and difficult’ issues to resolve (Holmes; 2008, p1011).  While contract killings of prominent businessmen and journalists have been significantly reduced, it is still a visible phenomena, prominently Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.  However in the international community the Russian legal framework is still viewed as corrupt by many, with both the CPI and Free House’s analysis of corruption perception placing Russia low in their ranking system (Holmes; 2008, p 1016-17).  Yet despite this many Western firms still embark on joint ventures with Russia, suggesting that while corruption is seen as a problem it is not too bad as to interfere with business arrangements. 

What can still be seen on the other hand is a disregard by Putin during his presidency for the course of due process.  The seizure of key property of the oligarchs Berezovskii, Gusinskii and Khodorkovskii has been linked to the USSR’s system of condemning political dissidents, and clearly violates article 19 of the constitution with regard to equal treatment before the law (White; 2005, p144-5).  That the oligarchs generally achieved their status through semi legal or illegal means is not questioned; what is in doubt is whether Putin has acted properly in the use of the power of Russia’s strong executive in order to remove these men from their influential position.  This has led to the concerns about respect for property rights, which is the cornerstone of Western based liberal market capitalism, and has potentially limited the extent of foreign investment, which is necessary for realising Putin’s stated objectives to achieve growth rates of 10% per year, given the relative lack of manufacturing industry.