On 12 June, the term of office of Vojtěch Šimíček, a Justice and Vice-President of the Constitutional Court, expired. Exactly one week later, the ten-year mandate of Justice of the Constitutional Court Tomáš Lichovník ended. However, the position of a vice-president and two justices' seats did not remain vacant for long.
Yesterday, the President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, appointed Justice Veronika Křesťanová as Vice-President of the Constitutional Court. Veronika Křesťanová became a Justice of the Constitutional Court on 8 August 2023. Prior to that, she worked at the Municipal Court in Prague, first as a single judge, then as a member and as the president of the senate, and from 2017 to 2023 as a vice-president of the court. In addition to her judicial practice, she has extensive (almost twenty years) experience as an attorney. Throughout her professional life, she has also worked in academia, where she has focused mainly on copyright law, media law and generally civil law. In 2015, she received the 2014 Lawyer of the Year award in the field of intellectual property law. In 2022, she was awarded the Flamma 2021 prize for inspiring female lawyers.
President of the Republic Petr Pavel also appointed two new Justices of the Constitutional Court, Tomáš Langášek and Jiří Přibáň.
Tomáš Langášek graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague. He received his JUDr. degree from the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University in Brno and his LL.M. in Comparative Constitutional Law from the Central European University. He spent part of his studies at Cornell University Law School in New York, where he focused mainly on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. From 2001 to 2003, he worked in the Office the Public Defender of Rights (Ombudsman). He was also a member of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment at the Council of the Government of the Czech Republic for Human Rights. In August 2003, the then President of the Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, appointed him his assistant. In November 2006, he was tasked with the establishment of the Analytical Department of the Constitutional Court and to head the unit. From 2009 to 2013, he served as Secretary General of the Constitutional Court. In 2012, he was appointed a judge and assigned to the Supreme Administrative Court.
Jiří Přibáň graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague. He became an associate professor at his alma mater in 1997 and received a professorship in the theory, philosophy and sociology of law in 2002. He teaches sociology of law, legal theory and constitutionalism at the School of Law and Politics of Cardiff University in Wales, where he has been a professor since 2006. He directs the Centre of Law and Society, which he was instrumental in founding. In addition, he has worked and given lectures at a number of other renowned universities around the world, including the University of California, Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, the University of Pretoria and the European University Institute in Florence. He is the author and editor of numerous scholarly essays and books such as Sociology of Law (Sociologie práva), Dissenters of Law (Disidenti práva) or The defence of constitutionalism: the Czech question in post-national Europe. He is also interested in the sociology of contemporary art and literature.
We wish sincerely the new Vice-President and the two new Justices of the Constitutional Court every strength and energy in fulfilling their important role as guardians of constitutionality.
External Relations and Protocol Department
© Photo: Office of the President of the Republic (Tomáš Fongus)