1 The parliament's upper chamber on Tuesday elected the last remaining judge for Russia's supreme legal body, the Constitutional Court, allowing it to resume its work after an imposed break of more than a year.
2 President Boris Yeltsin suspended the court for backing his hard-line enemies in the old parliament during the violent showdown in the fall of 1993. The judges then declared Yeltsin's decree disbanding the parliament unconstitutional.
3 The court's 13 former judges kept their seats, but a new law required six additional members.
4 It took the parliament's upper chamber, the Federation Council, more than a year to fill the vacancies, as it repeatedly turned down several candidates who had worked for Yeltsin's office.
5 On Tuesday, it confirmed the nomination of Marat Baglai, a doctor of law and the deputy head of the Academy of Labor and Social Sciences, the last court member who remained to be appointed.
6 'Finally, after painstaking selection, politically neutral lawyers have become the court's members,' the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
7 Previously, the court was permitted to examine the constitutional legality of government decisions on its own initiative, but the new law allows it to do that only on the request of the president, the government and several other institutions.

The court ' s 13 former judges kept their seats , but a new law required six additional members .
kept
What agreement did they reach to allow them to keep their seats?