CEU LEGS RANKING FIRST

Lidove noviny, one of the prominent newspapers in the Czech Republic, released an article about the standing of law faculties in Central Europe.

For the purpose of the article, the newspaper requested selected universities for submission of particular data. The following law faculties were assessed: Central European University from Hungary, Ludwig Maximilian University and Humboldt University from Germany, Vienna University from Austria, law faculties at universities in Warsaw and Krakow from Poland, Komensky University and University of Pavel Josef Safarik from Slovakia, and Charles University in Prague, Masaryk University in Brno, Palacky University in Olomouc and Law faculties in Pilsner and Karlovy Vary Law from the Czech Republic.

In the Dock, in Paris

The original post can be found on http://www.ejiltalk.org/in-the-dock-in-paris/#more-2976

(c) Prof. Joseph Weiler, January 2011

My entire professional life has been in the law, but nothing had prepared me for this. I have been a tenured faculty member  at the finest institutions, most recently Harvard and NYU.  I have held visiting appointments from Florence to Singapore, from Melbourne to Jerusalem. I have acted as legal counsel to governments on four continents, handled cases before the highest jurisdictions and arbitrated the most complex disputes among economic ‘super powers.’

Last week, for the first  time I found myself  in the dock, as a criminal defendant. The French Republic v Weiler on a charge of Criminal Defamation. The setting could not have been grander.  As I entered the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris, the French Old Bailey, my lawyer whispered: ‘Emile Zola was tried here.’ Vive la difference: This was no Dreyfus Affair but the stakes for Academic Freedom and liberty of expression are huge.

As Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law and its associated Book Reviewing website, I commissioned and then published a review of a book on the International Criminal Court. It was not a particularly favorable review. You may see all details here.  The author of the book, claiming defamation, demanded I remove it. I examined carefully the claim and concluded that the accusation was fanciful. Unflattering? Yes. Defamatory, by no stretch of imagination. It was my ‘Voltairian’ moment. I refused the request. I did offer to publish a reply by the author. This offer was declined.

The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

The Economist, Dec 16th 2010, Link: http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

ON THE evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.

In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master’s degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Professor Susanne Baer elected for the German Federal Constitutional Court

On November 11, 2010 CEU Legal Studies visiting professor Susanne Baer was elected to the German Federal Constitutional Court. As you may know, Susanne Baer is a professor of Public Law and Gender Studies at the Law Faculty at Humboldt University of Berlin and is its Dean of Academic Affairs. She is also director of the Law and Society Institute Berlin, Humboldt University’s centre for interdisciplinary socio-legal studies.

Professor Baer has developed numerous ties with CEU over the years. Since 2000 she has been a visiting professor at CEU Legal Studies, teaching courses on German constitutional law, comparative constitutional methodology and equality law and policy. In cooperation with the CEU Center on Public Policy she is also involved with the FP6 Integrated Project (2006-2011_ Quality in Gender+ Equality Policies (better known as QUING). Her research areas are socio-cultural legal studies, gender studies, law against discrimination and comparative constitutional law.

Among her numerous publications she is the author of the leading casebook Comparative Constitutionalism (2nd ed) West (2010) with Norman Dorsen, Michel Rosenfeld and Andras Sajo.

 

CEU SJD students congratulate Professor Baer and wish her a successful career as a Judge of the German Federal Constitutional Court!

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: “A country that tolerates a situation where the siloviki bureaucracy holds tens and even hundreds of thousands of talented entrepreneurs, managers and ordinary people in jail in its own interests…is a sick country”.

2 November 2010.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s last words in the Khamovnichesky district court of Moscow on the 2nd of November 2010. The court decision is expected on 15th of December 2010.

Honourable court!

Looking back, I can recall October of 2003. My last day as a free man. Several weeks after my arrest, I was informed that president Putin had decided: I was going to have to “slurp gruel” for 8 years. It was hard to believe that back then. Seven years have gone by already since that day. Seven years – quite a long stretch of time, and all the more so – when you’ve spent it in jail. All of us have had time to reassess and rethink many things. Judging by the sense of the prosecutors’ presentation: “give them 14 years” and “spit on previous court decisions”, over these years they have begun to fear me more, and to respect the law – even less. The first time around, they at least went through the effort of first repealing the judicial acts that stood in their way. Now – they’ll just leave them be; especially since they would need to repeal not two, but more than 60 decisions.

I do not want to return to the legal side of the case at this time. Everybody who wanted to understand something – has already understood everything. Nobody is seriously waiting for an admission of guilt from me. It is hardly likely that somebody today would believe me if I were to say that I stole all the oil produced by my company. But neither does anybody believe that an acquittal in the YUKOS case is possible in a Moscow court.

Red matter and black letter: A catastrophe and the law

Contributed by Zsolt Körtvélyesi

The first Monday of this October, around noon, the dam of a factory reservoir broke and the red sludge, the waste of aluminum producing spilled out in Hungary, around 160 km from Budapest. The sludge is toxic, nine persons died, 130 people were injured, three villages were seriously hit, one of them completely evacuated. Below we try to collect the legal aspects of the catastrophe.

Criminal liability

One of the first official reactions was a quest for those responsible for the tragedy. The CEO of the company behind the catastrophe was taken into custody one week after. He filed a complaint against both the charges and the arrest. Two days later, following a court decision, he was released. The court held that the conditions of the preliminary arrest (e.g. danger of escaping, impeding the collection of evidence, committing crime) are not met, the judge said that at the present phase of the procedure, they did not find that there is a ‘solid suspicion’ supporting the charges. The criminal proceeding continues, the crimes under consideration are professional misconduct leading to mass fatalities, public endangerment and harming the environment.

Let’s put our brooms and cleaning cloths together

A nice tradition of cleaning of our SJD lab has been launched by Ecaterina last year. It proved to be a nice team building exercise with pleasant consequences for all of us. This year, we would like to continue this tradition and make our environment cleaner and nicer for the upcoming academic year! We will put our brooms and cleaning cloths together next week,  on Wednesday, October 6, 13.00.

Public Defense of SJD Dissertation – Oleksiy Kononov

Public Defense of S.J.D. Dissertation of Mr. Oleksiy Kononov

SJD Dissertation: Foreign Direct Investment Regulation: German Model And Bulgarian Reforms Approach As Patterns For Ukraine

Date: 12 Oct 2010 – 1:00pm
Location: CEU,  the Senate room
Committee consisting of:
Prof. Dr. Stefan Messmann, Professor of Law, Central European University (Budapest, Hungary) – Chair and Thesis Supervisor
Prof. Dr. Peter Behrens, Professor of Law, University of Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany) – Member of the Committee
Prof. Dr. András Kisfaludi, Professor of Law, Faculty of Law Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary) – External Member of the Committee