Public Seminar 'Post-communism, Transitional Justice and Rule of Law'

Tuesday 8 September 2009, 1:00-2:00pm
at Room 212, Level 2, 234 Queensberry Street, The University of Melbourne

presented by

A/Prof Adam Czarnota

(School of Law the University of New South Wales)

Download audio mp3 (15MB)

Abstract

In the paper I will analyse the issue of ‘dealing with the past’ in post-communist Central-Eastern European countries from the point of view of the growing global transitional justice discourses. Central-Eastern European countries except former DDR and Czechoslovakia and later Czech republic adopted laws dealing with the communist past rather late in the second half of 90’s. The result of de-communisation, lustration, restitution of property is rather weak.

In the paper I will present the legal and moral strategies adopted in the region to deal with the past and also try to give answers to the question of why the so late approach to de-communisation. I will also assess the impact of the legislation on the quality of rule of law in the region. The next problem to be discussed in the paper is the puzzling question of discrepancies between growing global discourses on transitional justice and the silencing of such discourses in post-communist countries.

Biography

Adam Czarnota teaches philosophy and sociology of law and European Law in School of Law the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is co-director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Studies of Law at the same University.

He is member of the editorial board of Ius et Lex journal devoted to legal philosophy. Before he held positions in Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, Warsaw University Faculty of Law and, N.Copernicus University Faculty of Law and the Institute of Sociology.

He was Fellow of the Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts, visiting fellow in Catholic University Leuven and Oxford University, European University Institute, University of Edinburgh, European University Institute, Florence. He has lectured at universities in Australia, United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, South Africa and Georgia. He has been member of the Board of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Law and Chair of the Working Group on “Transformation of law in post-communist societies”.

Adam Czarnota has published extensively in Polish and English in fields of sociology of law, legal theory, philosophy of law and history of ideas, and political theory. Currently he is working on the book on legal strategies of dealing with the past in post-communist world.

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