Academic CentreThe work at the conference will proceed in nine sections:
The topic for the Civil Law Section of the Conference is “Private Law and Restrictions on the Content thereof Today”, within the framework of which the speakers will examine various legal institutions, typical of private law, relevant matters in the application thereof and problematic issues in the context of legal restrictions, which have been or should be established, by taking into account the valid interests of various persons. It is expected that speakers at the conference will analyse relevant issues of substantial and procedural private law, challenges encountered in theory and practice, by presenting the most significant conclusions on the issues, as well as proposing possible solutions.
In all societies, the legal system is set up, on the one hand, to protect a person’s freedom but, on the other hand, to organise the life of the entire society, aligning the freedom of an individual with the rights and interests of other persons. The threats experienced in recent years have impacted the limits of every person’s freedom: both the freedom of movement and self-determination with respect to one’s body, as well as the freedom of speech, and other liberties. States have imposed both temporary and lasting restrictions on a person’s freedom. In this Section, we invite to discuss the limiting of freedom from the perspective of legal theory and the teaching on legal method, as well as to a discussion on values and concepts from the perspective of legal philosophy, and on historical examples when the State, in order to deal with specific situations, has rapidly altered the limits of personal freedom to overcome crises.
Relevant issues of contemporary public law, pertaining to the understanding of an individual’s rights and freedoms, and an individual’s importance in society and the state will be examined in this Section of the Conference; likewise, obligations and responsibility of public institutions vis-à-vis and individual and society in a democratic state order will be analysed.
The year 2023 marks the 20th anniversary since the State Administration Structure Law entered into force in Latvia. As defined in this Law, the state administration must act in the public interest and must be organised in a manner that is as convenient and accessible to private individuals as possible. The effectiveness of the functioning of the state administration and its accessibility will be examined in this Section. It is expected that the speakers of this Section will analyse relevant issues in public administration, challenges encountered in theory and practice, as well as outline the possible directions for improvement.
The understanding of the concept of freedom in terms of various human rights and international public law aspects will be discussed in the Section, in particular, with respect to the limits on the freedom of states and individuals and the interaction between various freedoms. The framework of the topic, chosen for this Section, is broad, allowing to capture various aspects of international public law and human rights. In the context of issues related to the topic, such matters as, for example, sources of international law, humanitarian law, application of international law, functioning of some international organisations, as well as various human rights issues can be examined.
The understanding of the concept of freedom in the context of the European Union law and international private law will be discussed in the Section. The framework of the topic, chosen for this Section, is broad, allowing to capture various aspects of this branch of law. In the context of issues related to the topic, such matters as, for example, the application of the EU law in conjunction with national law, freedom in the context of other EU values, functioning of the freedoms of the EU internal market, the institutional structure and functioning of the EU, as well as various issues of international private law can be examined.
The Section is dedicated to a person’s freedom and the area of criminal law regulation, basically, criminal law and criminal procedure.
Within criminal law, as one of the most repressive sub-branches of law with the greatest impact upon a person’s freedom, the issue of how to balance successfully an individual’s freedom with the public interest in appropriate individual’s conduct does not lose its relevance, i.e., whether and where the limits on freedom and responsibility are found. Thus, primarily, the Section will focus on the criminalisation of offences, which directly impacts a person’s discretion by defining quite a specific framework. What are the trends in the criminalisation/ decriminalisation of offences? Isn’t criminalisation, currently, too extensive? Is criminal law regulation sufficiently clear and comprehensible? These and other similar matters will be examined within this thematic line of the Section.
Likewise, the Section will focus on particular legal instruments that guarantee the inviolability of a person’s freedom, as well as those, the application of which restricts a person’s freedom in the broadest sense of this word or even deprives of it.
Respecting the thematic framework of the Section, outlined above, presentations examining the following themes are welcome at it:
- Criminalisation/ decriminalisation of offences – trends, outcomes, etc.;
- Legality or opportunity in conducting criminal proceedings, including the possibility of private persons’ impact;
- Criminal law (substantive and procedural) remedies for protecting a person’s freedom – overview and analysis of specific examples;
- Criminal law measures for depriving of/ restricting a person’s freedom (in a narrow sense) – deprivation of liberty as penalty and a procedural coercive measure;
- Restricting a person’s movement in criminal proceedings;
- Restricting a person's freedom of speech in criminal law.
Presentations on other topics, pertaining to criminal law aspects of a person’s freedom, are also welcome.
The conference section covers the institute of direct claim from the perspective of modern insurance law. The problem issues of the direct claim institute are related to its relevance in civil liability insurance, while taking into account how differently direct claim may be regulated and understood in different countries. The vague nature and often limited scope of the direct claim jeopardises the protection of rights in civil liability insurance nowadays. Therefore, there are welcomed reports in this section related to diverse aspects of direct claim, especially concerning the essence, nature, scope of application or procedural peculiarities of direct claim.
The Section aims to focus on relevant matters related to legal regulation on education and scientific research, issues and trends of development. The following legal aspects of education will come into the centre of attention; the list, however, is not exclusive:
- Academic and research freedom, and restrictions on it;
- Issues related to compulsory education and the curriculum of compulsory education;
- Role of education and science in reinforcing a person’s freedom;
- Freedom of scientific research and the formal criteria for assessing its outcomes, etc.
The main focus will be on the higher education area; however, if potential speakers express interest in it, the scope of the Section may be expanded by covering also other levels of education.
Special section organized by the Central and Eastern European Heritage Research Group established at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland for the 9th international conference at the University of Latvia (9-10 November 2023)
Coordinators of the special section:
Prof. Anita Rodina (University of Latvia), Prof. Monika Florczak-Wątor (Jagiellonian University in Cracow)
Topic:
The role of CEE countries in shaping the common European constitutional heritage
Description of the topic:
The basic concept of cooperation and integration of European countries is to create an even closer union among the nations and individuals. This concept necessarily requires transplantation into constitutional narratives. One of them is the notion of common European constitutional heritage, which is to serve as a source of European constitutional ambitions and at the same time a tool for advocating universal values common for the European Union and the Council of Europe. The concept of a common European constitutional heritage is trending and highly relevant for contemporary European states and their citizens, though also extremely puzzling. It is based on the premise that despite the cultural, religious, political, social and economic differences determining the identity of individual states and their societies, there are common European values, such as inviolable and inalienable human rights, the dignity of the human being, freedom, equality, democracy and the rule of law.
The concept of a common European constitutional heritage was initially developed only by the Western European states participating in the integration processes as well as by the European institutions, especially the CJEU and ECHR. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE countries) did not participate in the creation of this concept for many years. It was only after the fall of Communism that these countries, redefining their constitutional identity, began to refer explicitly to the common European constitutional heritage as an established concept, constituting a certain determinant in the process of their democratisation. This was the spirit in which new constitutions were adopted in the 1990s, together with their pro-European constitutional courts. In contemporary European studies, however, there is a lack of reflection on the impact of the concept of a common European constitutional heritage on the development of constitutionalism and democracy in CEE states. It is therefore necessary to determine how this concept was
reconstructed in these states during the political transition, to what extent it was uncritically adopted and reproduced e.g. in the jurisprudence of constitutional courts, and when and how it began to be constructively criticised and developed.
Nowadays the CEE countries are actively co-creating a common European constitutional heritage, both in political and judicial dimension. So far, however, European science has not reflected on this phenomenon, nor has it given an answer to the question as to what extent and in what way the European constitutional heritage is co-created by the states of our region. The significance of constitutional heritage can be analysed in two dimensions: national and regional. At the national level, states develop the concept of their own constitutional heritage, assuming that they have retained full autonomy and sovereignty despite their involvement in integration processes. They now do so primarily by referring to the concept of constitutional identity and their own constitutional traditions. Although the issue of identity (national, constitutional and European) is currently being intensively explored by the European scholars, the conducted research does not provide an answer to the question of how the growing awareness in the CEE countries of the value of their own constitutional heritage translates into the development of the concept of a common European constitutional heritage. The discussion will also take into account the phenomenon of misuse of the concept of constitutional identity by populist governments of some countries in this region of Europe, particularly Poland and Hungary. The identity argument is treated by them as the one giving them unlimited freedom to define and apply values belonging to the common European constitutional heritage. At the regional level, the CEE countries, using their common historical experience and cultural tradition, develop the concept of regional constitutional heritage. This dimension of common constitutional heritage has so far not been the focus of European legal doctrine. The aim of this discussion in the framework of the special section will be to identify and compare the values perceived by the CEE countries (their constitutional courts and policy makers) as common to the region, which can be treated as elements of a regional constitutional heritage. It will then allow to determine to what extent the concept of regional constitutional heritage contributes to the development of the concept of a common European constitutional heritage.