Professor Mirjan Damaška Honored by Conference in Croatia

A conference in honor of Mirjan Damaška on the Administration of Justice—Past Experiences and Challenges for the Future was held on May 29–30, 2015, in Cavtat, Croatia. The event included five panels on The Administration of Justice, Evidence, Comparative Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Justice, and Damaška’s Influence in Other Areas of the Law. The University of Zagreb Faculty of Law organized the conference.

Participants included lawyers from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Yale Law School Professor Bruce Ackerman ’67 was the moderator of the panel on International Criminal Justice and a panelist on Damaška’s Influence in Other Areas of Law. Professor Harold Hongju Koh delivered welcoming remarks via video. “Damaška predicted that the Anglo tradition of reactive governance by legal notables would be challenged by a new cadre of techno-bureaucrats charged with the task of correcting market failures and providing millions of citizens with the prerequisites of social justice,” commented Ackerman. Maximo Langer, Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and a panelist on Comparative Criminal Procedure, added “Throughout his career, Mirjan Damaška has made original, insightful, and crucial contributions to the comparative understanding of the legal process.”

The papers presented by participants will be published in Germany by Duncker & Humblot, in a “Liber Amicorum” for Mirjan Damaška.

Mirjan Damaška is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the fields of comparative and foreign law, procedural law, evidence, international criminal law, and continental legal history. He is the author of six books, among which The Faces of Justice and Evidence Law Adrift were translated to several languages. Professor Damaška received his basic law degree at the University of Zagreb in his native Croatia. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). He began his teaching career at the University of Zagreb Law School. In 1971, he left his native land and accepted a tenured position at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has been on the faculty of Yale Law School since 1976. He periodically advises the Croatian government in its relations with the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In 2010 he was appointed special adviser to the Prime Minister of Croatia, and agent of the Republic of Croatia before the International Court of Justice, heading a team of Croatian and English lawyers in the case of Croatia v. Serbia.