Nummer 10 der „Blätter für Öffentliches Recht“ zum downloaden

This Volume includes over a hundred of legal analysis, expert opinions, views and expertise which gathered about eighty associates from around the region, representing three years of operation of the Centre for Public Law. In addition, the balance of the year 2012, besides four Volumes of Public Law, includes four symposiums and publishing of four books (The System of Social Protection, Justice in the Media, Who Elects Judges of Constitutional Court? and State Property). Twenty six pieces of expertise on fundamental questions of public law of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region are presented in the published monographs.

I do not want to mention the statistics of published expertise because I would like to emphasize the scope of work within the CJP. In fact, the actual engagement could not be seen from the statistics. It includes professional and scientific meetings and daily communication with professional and scientific audience. The mentioned data gain in significance in another context, namely, in connection with the fact that the work of CJP and his publishing activities are funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany under the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. This shows the extent to which the Federal Republic of Germany engages in the establishment of standards of legal state in B&H and the region. Funding of CJP is just one concrete evidence that the German commitment in terms of systematization, consequentiality and careful orientation to the legal system is indispensable to it in the area of  legal reform in the region not to approach the state from the same cultural background. With each number of the Volumes of public law this fact should be kept in mind.

The profile of this issue, other than public law analysis covering administrative or constitutional issues, jurisdiction and parliamentary law, includes themes which are not purely legal. They have been consciously chosen. One is dedicated to the legal and political science analysis by Jürgen Habermas. At the end of last year, parallel with the German edition, the CJP published the book An Essay on the European Constitution, which could serve as a “textbook” on historical resources of human rights, above all, human dignity: human dignity is the moral source of content for all human rights, and transnational law civilizes community and government relations of power. The potential of this opinion is inexhaustible and can be productively used in relation to civilizing effects of the constitutional law, particularly in B&H. From a scientific colloquium that was staged on the occasion of publishing this book, we bring several discussions. They remind us of the potentials of Kant’s philosophical idea of eternal peace and demonstrate its extent of perception in modern political philosophy. The second topic includes a state-legal base and theological-philosophical answer. It introduces us to a rather simple but contentious topic — Statehood Day of B&H. Instead of legal discussions, on this occasion, we publish a pertinent text by friar Ivan Šarčević, in which Bosnia’s statehood is viewed as a matter of constitution of cohesive ideas, opinions and acts that integrate between each other. A theologian is writing about the topic, employing a historical-sociological analytical procedure and precisely because of that it can be useful to lawyers as a small philosophical instruction that normativity does not necessarily bring justice, especially if it is not supported by ethics.

I thank our associates for the effort and attention in writing the analysis for the first ten volumes, and our message to readers is that the Volumes of public law will continue.