The article first discusses some preliminaries regarding constitutional courts and existing characterizations of them. These preliminary considerations are then used to elaborate a model that locates courts within their governmental systems. This model, which also draws on existing substantive literature and on theories that assume strategic behavior on the part of political actors, in turn, enables the construction of behavioral predictions about the interactions among courts, executives, and legislatures. These predictions are outlined in this article. Although these predictions could be assessed in many distinct contexts, the authors focus on Russia. They demonstrate how the model helps make sense of the behavior of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the context of the difficult political situation it confronted. The article concludes with some thoughts on the broader implications of the authors' theory for the study of courts throughout Eastern Europe and how it may well illuminate constitutional politics in other parts of the world. 1 table, 5 figures, and 164 references