The Central and Eastern European Regional Chapter of ICON-S held its annual international conference on Traditional Concepts: New Perspectives, New Challenges on March 29, 2019 at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague. The conference aimed to stimulate scholars to reflect on new perspectives on traditional concepts built into liberal democracy and on challenges faced by these concepts in contemporary Europe, including its Central and Eastern countries.
Two S.J.D candidates were selected by the organizers from the Department to present their latest research findings.
Viktor Kazai presented his paper “Constitutional Adjudication under Political Pressure – Judicial Review in Illiberal Political Regimes” on the Judicial Review and Judicial Independence panel. In his presentation he emphasized the need to adopt a conceptual framework based on the strategic model of analysis in order to evaluate in a more sophisticated way the jurisprudence of constitutional courts operating under strong political pressure, such as the Hungarian Constitutional Court or the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.
Dorjana Bojanovska Popovska presented her paper “From a Liberal Democracy to a Hybrid Model without Constitutional Change: The Case of North Macedonia” on the Democracy Decay – Institutions panel. Focusing on Macedonia in the period between 2006 and 2016, she argued that a democracy can slide into a hybrid model simply with the help of populist discourse producing undemocratic proceduralism and undermining the rule of law, and the (ab)use of constitutional procedures for snap-elections.
Several alumni from the Comparative Constitutional Law program were among the organizers, hosts and attendees, including David Kosar who is now the Director of the Juridical Studies Institute at Masaryk University, Marek Antos as the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law, Charles University, Matija Milos from the University of Rijeka and Silvia Suteu from University College London.
Professor Renáta Uitz, in attendance as a panel commentator and ICON-S CEE advisory board member, was delighted to see so many members of the CCL family under one roof. We hope to see you and all others at the next Alumni Coffee House at CEU in Budapest on Friday, May 3 from 6 PM at the Popper room in the Monument Building.