Current Justices and Court Officials

vypis soudci

doc. JUDr. Jan Svatoň, CSc.

Justice (since 15 February 2023)

doc. JUDr.  Jan Svatoň CSc.
Jan Svatoň (*1952) was born and raised in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and has lived in Brno since 1979. He graduated from the University of J. E. Purkyně Law Faculty (today's Masaryk University), where he received his Doctor of Law (JUDr.) degree in 1979 and his Candidate of Sciences (CSc.) degree in 1987. After graduating, he became a judicial trainee at the District Court in Žďár nad Sázavou and he joined the Department of Administrative Law and Administrative Science at his alma mater as an assistant in 1978. In 1990, he moved to the newly established Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science, where he has been working ever since. In addition to teaching at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University, he taught theory of state and partly also constitutional law at the Faculty of Law of Palacký University in Olomouc for eight years. He obtained the scientific academic title of docent in 1998 in the field of constitutional law and theory of state.

He was a member of the Academic Senate of the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University several times in the 1990s, after which he also held the position of the Faculty’s Vice-Dean and then Dean from 2001 to 2007, significantly contributing to its development. He also served as the Vice-Rector of the University from 2007 to 2011. In the following period, he served several times as the Head of the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science and once again as the Vice-Dean of the Faculty from 2015 to 2019. He was a member of several scientific councils of the Masaryk University and Palacký University in Olomouc, as well as of law faculties in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. He is also a member of the doctoral study programme boards at the faculties of law of the Masaryk University and Charles University. His specialisation helped him become a member of the Council of the Czech Judicial Academy, a long-time judicial assistant at the Constitutional Court (first for JUDr. Güttler and then for prof. Sládeček from 2013) and the Constitutional Court of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (for prof. Malenovský) and an associate judge of the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Administrative Court. He was also a member of the Commission for Public Law of the Government Legislative Council of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, an evaluator of the National Accreditation Bureau for Higher Education and served on (sub)committees of the Czech Science Foundation.

Jan Svatoň was awarded the Masaryk University Gold Medal as a recognition of his many years of service at the University.

His professional focus and publications are mainly in the field of theory of state, constitutional law (constitutional systems), public administration, organisation of state (especially the position, scope, powers and functions of the government), as well as in political science, political and state decision-making processes and their control. He utilised his knowledge in the field of administrative law and administrative science, constitutional law and political science when designing a renewed Theory of State course at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University. Since the first half of the 1990s, he has been the guarantor of this course, he has given lectures on it, and he has also prepared a comprehensive publication for this course in cooperation with Professor Jan Filip (currently on its fifth edition); he also teaches constitutional law and political science. He has contributed to the creation of several other teaching aids. He has completed a number of stays abroad in his academic career (e.g. at the University of Oxford, Nottingham Trent University, the Universities of Bologna, Vilnius, Wroclaw, Bergen, Fordham University in New York and John Marshall Law School in Chicago).

On 15 February 2023, the President of the Czech Republic appointed him a Justice of the Constitutional Court.

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