ACTS
I. The circumstances of the case
5. The applicant was born in 1973 and lives in the town of Belgorod in the Belgorod Region.
6. On 29 December 1992 the applicant's husband bought municipal property, including the premises of a former restaurant. According to the applicant, several years later her husband, fearing for his life and for the safety of his family, signed a contract with a number of individuals, transferring title to the restaurant building to them.
7. On 5 May 2002 the applicant, in the interests of her minor child, lodged an action against her husband, seeking invalidation of the contract. She claimed that her husband had acted ultra vires while signing the contract, as he had not been the sole owner of the building. A part of the building had belonged to their minor child.
8. The Sverdlovskiy District Court of Belgorod accepted the claim for examination and listed a hearing. However, on 13 August 2002 it transferred the case to the Commercial Court of the Belgorod Region for further adjudication. The relevant part of the decision read as follows:
"By virtue of paragraph 1 of Section 4 of the Code of Commercial Procedure of the Russian Federation, which entered into force on 6 August 2002, the present case falls into the jurisdiction of a commercial court.
Under Article 7 of the Federal Law "On Putting into Operation the Code of Commercial Procedure of the Russian Federation" cases which are in the process of adjudication by courts of general jurisdiction and which, according to the Code of Commercial Procedure..., have been placed under the jurisdiction of commercial courts, should be transferred by courts of general jurisdiction, with the plaintiff's consent, to commercial courts within two weeks after paragraph 1 of Section 4 of the Code of Commercial Procedure has entered into force... If the plaintiff does not consent to the transfer of the case from the court of general jurisdiction to the commercial court, the court of general jurisdiction discontinues the proceedings in the case at issue because the case is not within the jurisdiction of the court of general jurisdiction.
At the hearing the plaintiff, [the applicant], consented, which she had confirmed in writing, to the transfer of the case to the commercial court.
The court finds it necessary to transfer the case pertaining to the [applicant's] action against [her husband]... to the Commercial Court of the Belgorod Region."
An appeal against the District Court's decision could have been lodged before the Belgorod Regional Court within ten days.
9. On 17 October 2002 the Commercial Court of the Belgorod Region discontinued the proceedings because it found that it had no jurisdiction over the claim.
10. On 10 December 2002 the Appeal Division of the Commercial Court of the Belgorod Region upheld the decision of 17 October 2002, endorsing the reasons given by the Commercial Court. On 24 March 2003 the Federal Commercial Court of the Central Circuit, in the final instance, upheld the decisions of 17 October and 10 December 2002.
II. Relevant domestic law
11. The RSFSR Code of Civil Procedure of 11 June 1964 (in force at the material time) provided that a case accepted for consideration by a court in compliance with the jurisdictional rules was to be examined on its merits, even if it subsequently fell under another court's jurisdiction. A case could only be transferred to another court if: (a) it was considered that another court could examine the case faster and more correctly, particularly if another court sat in the place where the majority of items of evidence was situated; (b) if a respondent whose place of residence had previously been unknown asked the court to transfer his or her case to the court at the place of his or her residence; (c) i
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