Constitutional Court Stacked Entirely With Pashinyan Appointees

Armenia’s Constitutional Court, which will decide whether to annul the June 2026 parliamentary election results challenged by six opposition forces, is composed entirely of appointees from Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party. This is unprecedented in Armenian history. When Robert Kocharyan came to power, the court still contained judges appointed by his predecessor. When Serzh Sarksyan took office, he too inherited appointees from earlier administrations. Pashinyan has cleared the slate completely, packing the Constitutional Court with partisan appointees, during a prolonged standoff during 2019 and 2020. The presiding judge in the election case is Edgar Shatiryan, reported to be a classmate of Alen Simonyan, a top Civil Contract official. Two judges, Artak Zeynalyan and Vladimir Vardanyan, were recused from the case over concerns about bias. Zeynalyan is from the Republic party, a pro-Pashinyan satellite; Vardanyan was a senior Civil Contract MP before his sudden appointment to the bench. A third judge, Seda Safaryan, was also nominated for removal. She previously ran as an MP candidate for the pro-Pashinyan ‘For the Republic’ party. While Hovik notes that judges, as lawyers, have reputations to protect and the law may require them to justify their rulings, the structural reality remains stark: no independent voice sits on the court. For the opposition, mounting evidence of invalidated precincts and electoral violations may be so overwhelming that even Pashinyan appointees struggle to find legal justification for upholding the results. Yet the risk of a court hand-picked by one party rendering judgment on that party’s election remains the defining institutional problem.