Dum Spiro Spero

He was the principal drafter of the Czech Constitution and a great admirer of the United States.

1938 – 2009

The rules of human conduct are the most difficult to transform because there is the tremendous force of inertia to contend with. Political and legal changes can be modeled on the systems of western democracies; the communist regimes did that to a large extent. In contrast, rules of human conduct are learned by observing societal conduct and are not changed by amendments to legal texts but only by people actually modifying their behavior. In this way, a dissonance between the abstract principles of law and constitutional government introduced since 1989 and peoples’ actual conduct has developed. These principles must be infused over time into the actual life of society.

Tags: Vojtěch Cepl

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 2:39 am and is filed under CEELI, Czech Republic, Human Rights, Rule of Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.