Bratislava Legal Forum 2018
The Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava hosted the fourth annual of the prestigious international academic conference Bratislava Legal Forum on 22 and 23 February 2018.
The conference was hosted by the Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava in partnership with the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic. It was held under the auspices of Ivetta Macejková, President of the Constitutional Court, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Constitution and the establishment of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic as well as of the 100th anniversary of the declaration of the Czechoslovak Republic.
Bratislava Legal Forum is an international academic and law-oriented conference aiming to interconnect legal theory with practice. The main topic of this year's conference was “Judiciary as the Guarantor of the Values of the Democratic State and the Rule of Law”.
Commemorating the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution and the establishment of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic provided a great opportunity to reflect on the current issues concerning the functioning of the rule of law and its main protector – the judiciary. On the very first day of the conference, the plenary session was held in the historical auditorium of Comenius University focusing on the main topic of the conference.
A number of important personalities gave their speech after it was opened by Associated Professor Eduard Burda, Dean of the Faculty of Law. The following speech was delivered by Ivetta Macejková, President of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic, whose presentation was entitled “The Constitutional Court and the Distribution of Powers”. Next, Stanislav Gaňa, Deputy of the Office of the President of the Slovak Republic, presented a letter prepared by the president of the Slovak Republic. This was followed by the speech given by Tamás Sulyok, President of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, who spoke about the “dialogue between the constitutional court and general courts in Hungary” emphasizing the mutual responsibility and the rule of law. The conference was also attended by Didier Maus, former judge of the French State Council and the Constitutional Court in Andorra. He talked about the development and the current situation in the French constitutional justice. This was followed by the speech given by Lenka Praženková, Chairwoman of the Judicial Council of the Slovak Republic, who presented her reflections on the independence of the judiciary and the judicial council being the constitutional body of judicial legitimacy. The following speaker - Zdeněk Kűhn – judge of the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic – talked about the rise and limits in the role of constitutional courts in Central and Eastern European countries. The plenary session of the conference was closed by the speech given by Ján Svák from the Faculty of Law at CU in Bratislava whose presentation was entitled „25 Years of Slovakia and 25 Problems Faced by the Slovak Judiciary“.
After the plenary session was over, twelve topic-based and simultaneously run sections were launched. Guarantors of individual sections chose various papers which were subsequently presented and which focused on current legal issues and problems, with an emphasis put on the functioning of the judiciary. The composition of the conference participants was very varied and a number of renowned experts from Slovak as well as foreign universities and legal practitioners attended the conference.
We truly hope that international academic conferences of similar nature will become a valuable platform for exchanging and comparing knowledge and findings as well as the floor for an interesting, professional and scholarly discussion about the development in individual areas of law and urgent issues faced by application practice which influence the public life.
The Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava would hereby like to thank all the partners of the conference.