As we have previously already reported, artist Maja Smrekar, with the help of the Čeferin family law firm, is demanding 50,000 euros in damages from the opposition Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) for the use of a video of her breastfeeding a dog.
The Čeferin law firm is demanding high damages and a ban on the publication of the (allegedly copyrighted) photographs, which were taken as part of expressionist art for which the artist received a lot of taxpayers’ money.
What is most interesting here is that Smrekar’s lawsuit notice was sent to the SDS party with the help of a law firm owned by the Čeferin family.
Namely, one of the co-owners of the Čeferin Law Firm is Rok Čeferin, who is also one of the nine judges of the Slovenian Constitutional Court. His law firm is now, paradoxically, representing an artist/political activist who, with the help of the far-left party, the Left (Levica), is suing the political party SDS. The question here is whether there might be a conflict of interest.
He appears to be in direct breach of Article 37 of the Law on the Legal Profession, which provides as follows:
“The activities of a law firm shall be limited to the practice of the legal profession. The association of law firms for the purpose of jointly carrying out the practice of the profession of lawyer shall not be permitted. Only lawyers who are engaged in the practice of the profession of lawyer in the law firm may be members of a law firm. The members may not carry out the practice of the profession of lawyer in other law firms.”
In this case, we are even talking about a Constitutional Court judge who is a co-owner of a law firm, and who is involved in political prosecutions of the opposition, which is even more absurd. The fact that the status of Rok Čeferin as a partner and, at the same time, a Constitutional Court judge is, at the very least, controversial has been pointed out several times in the past.
According to the dictum of the Law on Advocacy, Rok Čeferin should not have become a Constitutional Court judge in the first place, but when his firm is arranging business for activist-political purposes and thus indirectly engaging in a pre-election race, the situation is even more unhygienic, and indicates why Article 37 of the Law is worded as it is, since the legislator wanted to prevent precisely such cases as the case of Maja Smrekar, the Čeferin law firm, and its socialist links with Rok Čeferin. Even if the case goes to the Constitutional Court and judge Čeferin is disqualified from the decision-making process, there is still a conflict of interest, and it is clear that problems have arisen in the past precisely because of the (non-)disqualification of Čeferin.
Conflict of interest also in deciding on government action against the spread of the epidemic
It is also worth noting that during the epidemic, we wrote about the Constitutional Court’s decision on the government’s measures against the epidemic, where lawyer (or co-owner of the law firm Čeferin) and Constitutional Court judge Rok Čeferin allegedly had a conflict of interest.
Namely, the Čeferin Law Firm publicly announced that it had set up a legal network to represent pro bono (free of charge) all those who had been fined for violating the government’s decrees to curb the Covid-19 epidemic, which is what the Čeferin Law Firm was supposedly also doing at the time. As is well known, Rok Čeferin, as a Constitutional Court judge, subsequently ruled that these measures taken by the government to curb the epidemic were unconstitutional.
As a result, the Čeferin Law Firm was reimbursed by the state for all the legal costs it incurred in representing these people in proceedings that arose due to fines or penalties for breach of the ordinances.
In light of the known facts, there is undeniably at least objective bias in this case, and Constitutional Court judge Čeferin should have recused himself from the case.
Lawyer/Constitutional Court judge Čeferin as an anomaly of the system?
It should also be noted that some time ago, Constitutional Court judge Klemen Jaklič was in the crosshairs of left-wing politicians for teaching at the Catholic Institute as a freelance entrepreneur. Of course, this is in no way contrary to the Constitutional Court Act, nor was Jaklič in any conflict of interest, as the National Agency for Quality in Higher Education eventually found.
The situation is completely different with the owner of the law firm and Constitutional Court judge Rok Čeferin, who has shares in two companies. He is the sole shareholder in the company Inštitut za civilno pravo, d.o.o. (The Institute for Civil Law), and a 19.5 percent shareholder in the law firm Čeferin and Partners.
As already mentioned above, Article 37 of the Law on the Legal Profession sets two conditions that must be fulfilled simultaneously. Only a lawyer (i.e. a lawyer who fulfils the conditions for the practice of the profession of lawyer) who practises as a lawyer in the same law firm may be a partner in a law firm.
It follows that Constitutional Court judge Rok Čeferin could be a partner in a law firm only if he were also a lawyer. However, this is prohibited by Article 16 of the Constitutional Court Act, which states that the office of a Constitutional Court judge is incompatible with (paragraph 3) “the pursuit of a profession or gainful activity, other than that of a higher education teacher, researcher or higher education associate.” Since Čeferin does not practise law, at least officially, it follows that he cannot be a partner in a law firm.
And now, the law firm of the Constitutional Court judge is even indirectly representing a far-left political party, attacking an opposition political party as a (purely political) manoeuvre to attack a potential referendum on extraordinary pensions. Lawyer/Constitutional Court judge Čeferin is, therefore, indirectly involved in a political struggle between political parties, which is specifically the situation that Article 37 of the Law on the Legal Profession was intended to prevent.
I. K.
