Week Three
After a small technology glitch, I am back up and running to tell you about week three in Prague!
It is so hard to believe that June is halfway over. I am moving very quickly through projects here at the CEELI Institute, staying busy but also finding more time to see the city and learn about Prague. That said, I still feel that time is rushing by!
During week three, I completed a large project involving a proposal for a project with the European Commission. My role was to research three areas: hate crimes, the right of access to a lawyer for those in detention, and parental custody and divorce. These three areas may seem quite unrelated and disparate, but they are three areas where the European Union has issued directives to Member States. These directives are basically legal instructions to instruct Member States on basic standards of legal procedures and rules in order to further encourage consistency of judicial ruling and application of laws across Member States.
The best analogy for understanding the relationship between the Member States' laws and procedures and the EU directives (or laws) is perhaps the relationship in the US between the federal and state governments. There is a need for there to be some degree of consistency in the application of laws and principles and even values across states, some of which is imposed through the federal system, but states also have the freedom and independence to pass their own laws and maintain their own legislative systems. And this relationship is not always friendly, as the impositions of the federal upon the state is not always welcome. The EU and its Member States, of course, have a radically different structure and history, but there are similar challenges in smoothing out the wrinkles across a vast region that is comprised of many different cultures, histories, languages, and legal norms.
The area of hate crimes is perhaps the most illustrative. It was interesting, in my research, to learn that while some countries (i.e., Germany) have long understood hate crimes not only as a legal category with particular significance, but also as a historical category with a set of meanings that most Americans would also recognize. Yet, in other countries where there has not been as much discussion or explicit conversation about and definition of a hate crime, it is not widely recognized as a type of crime, and therefore, it has not been interpreted as a legal category. In other words, judges in these countries are less likely to attribute significance to racially, religiously, or ethnically biased motives of criminal actors when ruling in these contexts, because the category of "hate crime" is not well defined to begin with.
The EU's directive on hate crimes is trying to amend this discrepancy across Member States, but it involves more than issuing a statement or a mandate from above. The basic understanding of conceptualizing a hate crime, differentiating it from other crimes, and deciding how to proceed in deliberating on these crimes in the courtroom is something that has evolved over the course of decades in many countries, including the US and many in Western Europe. Bottom line: there is a need for more conversation, ongoing education, and training, particularly at a time when we are seeing rampant targeting of minority religious, racial, and ethnic groups across the world. Simply telling countries they have to start prosecuting hate crimes in a particular way will not do the trick.
I suppose I am contemplating how slow--and how fragile--the process of judicial reform can be, because I've spent much of my free time delving into the history of Prague, the Czech Republic, and Eastern Europe more broadly. As an American who has taken much of my comfort and freedom for granted, it is easy to forget that it was in my lifetime that this country was ruled by a very different type of regime. The struggle for democratic rule in the Czech Republic is well documented at the Museum of Communism, which I visited this week. It is remarkable to watch footage of those who used all that they had in their power, which often amounted simply to their own bodies, to demand an end to totalitarianism. The museum curators drew a link to those at Tianammen Square, where things ended much more tragically, and I could not help but think of what is currently happening in Hong Kong. A conversation that I had this week brought things close to home once again. During a brief dinner at the CEELI Institute, I had an exchange (translated very generously by one of my office mates) with some Russian lawyers who were attending a CEELI training. While I thought they might want to exchange pleasantries about the weather, I was surprised to discover they were discussing the immense challenges of advocating for their clients when they have to wait hours in waiting rooms at prisons just to meet with them, when religious minorities are being targeted and rounded up for lengthy detention, and when the rule of law is interrupted by unpredictable and indiscriminate moves by those in power. These men and women seemed so calm as they spoke, but it made me realize the weight they are carrying and the simple benefit of sharing their stories with those who understand what they are experiencing.