Week Two
It is hard to believe that Week Two has already come and gone since I arrived in Prague. In some ways, I feel as if I am still settling into the rhythm of the summer, but in other ways I already feel like a full member of the team and fully immersed in the work of the CEELI Institute.
This week began with a few more assignments related to the grant proposal I worked on last week. As a refresher, CEELI is aiming to do a project with IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems) addressing gaps in anti-corruption reform efforts in a few select countries. My task for the final round of proposal revisions was to research all of the countries chosen, which included those in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to see what existing legislation exists in each of the countries to regulate corruption, public ethics, independence of the judiciary, and other related areas. And then, as one step further, I was tasked with seeing if this legislation or regulatory mechanism had proven to be effective, or if there were further recommendations by the UN or other international/regional bodies for further reform.
The thrill of the task was in consolidating lots of information into very succinct, direct statements, and doing so quickly. So I began skimming long reports in an effort to find fairly specific information. All in all, it was a fun challenge, and it revealed the complexity of interaction between national legislation and international laws, treaties, agreements, and recommendations at the granular level. It is interesting to see the limitations of the international or regional regulatory bodies in certain areas. Of course, each country is different, with different legislative histories, so it was also interesting to observe how some countries might be very strong in eliminating, for example, conflict of interest issues among political officials, but have almost nothing effective in the way of preventing political manipulation of judicial rulings. I appreciate the approach that CEELI and IFES are taking, which is one of seeing each of the legislative and regulatory parts as a system. If one part is broken, the whole ceases to function properly.
After we finished the proposal, with final edits and another round of review, my work has moved on to other projects. In addition to helping CEELI prepare for their Annual Meeting, where they will host an impressive lineup of human rights activists, judges, journalists, lawyers, and other speakers, I am working on research more directly related to the European Union (EU). For this assignment, I am researching specific directives made by the EU and how they interact with national legislation at the country level. For example, we want to understand difficulties that judges and lawyers may be having in interpreting and applying EU law, in addition to domestic law, when it comes to issues like divorce and parental custody. This topic may not seem immediately relevant to a regional body such as the EU, but because of the additional freedoms in moving across borders and more prevalence of marriages that occur between citizens of different countries, the EU has passed legislation on how to determine which country has jurisdiction over cases that involve these types of marriages, particularly when child custody is implicated. The question for us, however, is whether judges know how to properly apply these laws, as they are often passed after the judges begin their tenure on the bench.
Another area I’m investigating is hate crimes. Since there are also directives emerging from the EU on how hate crimes should be prosecuted in the courts, there is a question of how these instructions are actually being applied—and to what effect. In many cases, individual countries do not have much in the way of domestic legislation on hate crimes, and the concept as a legal category may be new. We are investigating to see what kind of training is needed for judges, in particular, in order to translate these legal concepts into action in the individual courts.
All in all, I am starting to see projects pile up, which is a good thing. Next week, I am sure I will have more to report on what else I have learned from my research.