Macedonia Jurisprudence Project

Feb 1, 2010 - Jan 31, 2013

Project description

In Macedonia, there is no uniform application of jurisprudence. Court rulings are mainly based on the letter of the law and there is hardly any room for interpretation of the law by judges. Under the strict formalistic (legalistic) approach jurisprudence is not considered to be a source of law. The exception here is the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. However, as a result of linguistic problems only a few legal professionals can read the Strasbourg jurisprudence in English and French.
Part of the problem is also related to the fact that jurisprudence is not systematically published in Macedonia. As a result it is also not analyzed and used in practice. The consequences of this situation is that there is hardly any scrutiny of court decisions by experts and legal practitioners. Decisions are not analysed and debated. For courts it is difficult to develop a common jurisprudence on certain legal issues since most courts are not informed about the jurisprudence of other courts. The consequence is that there is less legal certainty in Macedonia’s citizens and other parties in legal proceedings as the outcomes of trials are quite unpredictable. For lawyers it is therefore difficult to advice their clients properly. The two problems which will be addressed by the present project are: (1) insufficient access to jurisprudence and insufficient dissemination of jurisprudence and (2) insufficient knowledge/awareness about the role of jurisprudence and inexperience in working with jurisprudence.

Topic

Jurisprudence; European Law

Objective

The T.M.C. Asser Instituut offers key legal and training expertise, notably on working with jurisprudence of international and Europeans courts throughout the entire life-time of the project.
Services:
1. Introducing (working with) jurisprudence into university curricula
2. Introducing (working with) jurisprudence into the curricula of the AJP and the Training Committee of the Macedonian Bar
3. Training seminars for representatives of the Academy, the Bar Association and the universities
4. Building databases with relevant international, EU and national jurisprudence, both for the AJP and universities