summarizes the culture of materiality that characterises much of the legal process. In other words, any arguments or petitions by each side to the legal proceedings have to be supported by written documents contained in the case file in order to have a chance to succeed. Finally, and in comparison to many European civil judges, Russian judges are quite overworked (Hendley, 2012: 344). Some low-level judges, who also handle immigration cases, decide on average 200 cases per month, ‘a pace that seems incredible’ (Hendley 2013: 808). All these factors point to the conclusion that a legal argument that can warrant their attention has to be unambiguous, clear-cut, and supported by obligatory written evidence – official letters, documents, correspondence, multiple spravkas [references] and reports. The case of Mr Mskhiladze fit these criteria perfectly: he was a stateless USSR national and Georgia had confirmed in writing and on multiple occasions, that Mr Noe Mskhiladze had never been a Georgian national. A critical mass of documentary evidence was deposited in the case file to give credibility to the lawyer’s argument that Mr Mskhiladze was de jure stateless. His deportation was impossible to enforce, as Mr Mskhiladze had no country willing to admit him, which put into question the lawfulness of his prolonged detention. The Constitutional Court saw this argument very clearly. Mskhiladze was a strong case because it was so manifestly blatant. Furthermore, Mr Mskhiladze, although now stateless, was a former USSR national. His detention was symptomatic of a broader issue – an existence of a substantial group of former USSR citizens who, in the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, had never acquired any other citizenship. This needed to be addressed as matter of historical and social justice. The RCC recognized this by setting a clear three-month limit on detention warranting a judicial review (oversight). Once the decision of the Constitutional Court was announced in Mr Mskhiladze case, this judgment became a legal tool in the hands of pro-bono immigration and refugee lawyers from the ‘Migration and Law’ network (Kubal 2019). These cause lawyers literally stopped at 15