Abstract
The article highlights the types and features of international treaties of the Russian Federation as a source of private international law, their differences from foreign economic agreements between administrative-territorial units of different states and transnational transactions, as well as the procedure for their application with the establishment of their correlation with federal laws and other normative legal acts of the Russian Federation in the civil law sphere.
It is argued that the priority application of an international treaty over federal laws be recognized in case of its ratification or another inclusion into the domestic legal system by adopting a federal law. Otherwise, its advantage should concern only over by-laws of the Russian Federation. In this regard, the need for a restrictive interpretation of Article 15 (4) of the Russian Constitution is substantiated with respect to the type of a governmental body making a consent to such inclusion on behalf of the Russian state, and the hierarchy of diverse normative legal acts in the Russian Federation with their different legal effect.
The article also outlines conflict-of-law rules defining the correlation of international treaties having the same scope of their application. The lex specialis derogat generali rule, which gives priority to a special international treaty, is deemed to be the main one. This issue should be resolved primarily at the international level, ensuring the uniform application of international treaties in various national legal systems.