The judiciary in Central and Eastern Europe : mechanical jurisprudence in transformation? / / by Zdeněk Kühn.

• Superior document: Law in Eastern Europe, v. 61
• Author: Kühn, Zdeněk.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Law in Eastern Europe ; no. 61.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

One of the most widespread problems in post-Communist countries is the quality of the judiciary. The book argues that these problems are intimately linked to the legal culture of Communist law, that an understanding of post-Communist judges necessarily requires an understanding of their Communist predecessors. There seems to be a deep continuity in the methods of legal reasoning employed by lawyers in the region of East Central Europe, starting in the era of Stalinism of the 1950's up to the current post-Communist period, which continuity is manifested in the problems of 1990's and 2000's. Communist legal culture and its aftermath provide an interesting analysis of the development of legal culture in a long-lasting system which was intellectually almost completely separated from the outside world. The book targets the judicial ideology, the conception of law, and the judicial self-perceptions, which are phenomena most likely to be contained in the deepest level of legal culture, that most resistant to change.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- The origins of Central European legal culture -- Socialist legal culture in Central Europe : an introduction -- From Stalinist anti-formalism to socialist textual positivism : Central European judicial methodology during the Cold War -- Institutional changes after the collapse of communism -- Judicial methodology in a post-communist world : overcoming the concept of limited law? -- Conslusions. Rethinking the future of the central european judiciary.