Faces of Constitutional Justice:
A Typical Portrait of an Eastern European Judge
The report is dedicated to the average portrait of judges of constitutional courts in nine Eastern European countries: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Romania. The main goal of the report is to answer the simple question: who are the judges of an Eastern European сonstitutional court? The following criteria were used for comparison: the body(ies) appointing judges, age, gender balance, academic degree, education, and previous work experience (professional background). We conducted a detailed analysis of the biography of each judge from the nine countries and compiled a portrait of the judge for each country as well as Eastern Europe as a whole.
The generalized portrait looks as follows: a 60-year-old male, a graduate of the law faculty of a capital university, has several international internships and teaching experience at foreign universities, was previously a law professor and combined this with a judicial position, holds a PhD degree and was appointed through a mixed model, with the participation of parliament and other institutions of power — the president and the judicial system — for a non-renewable term of nine years.
An additional section on judges' image is included in the report: despite the diversity of biographies, we were able to identify common career paths, based on which we constructed a general image of judges — “judge-teacher”, “judge-politician”, “judge — civil servant”, and so on.
At the end of the report, there is a Legal Opinion section in which leading legal experts O.N. Kryazhkova, E.A. Mishina, and S.A. Pashin answer questions about gender quotas, the procedure for appointing judges, and the role of the human rights community.