Public lecture

Press release — 8 February 2012

 

Prof William B. Simons from Leiden University’s Faculty of Law will give a public lecture entitled

LAW IN RUSSIA: DOES IT LIVE UP TO EXPECTATIONS?
(announcement .pdf)

on 21 February 2012 from 12:15-13:45 at the Iuridicum (Näituse 20), room 217.

William Simons is Professor of East European Law at Leiden University. He received his undergraduate, graduate and law degrees at educational institutions in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont and the Netherlands. Dr. Simons has published extensively in the area of Russian, East European and comparative law. His research interests include public policy, reasonableness and fairness as tools to strengthen the ‘social character’ of Russian law and society, the harmonization of law versus regulatory competition in the CIS region, and issues of access to justice in the state and private sectors. For over 15 years, Prof Simons has served as the Editor of a quarterly law journal Review of Central and East European Law and the monograph series Law in Eastern Europe. He has also worked ‘in the field’ as a practicing attorney inter alia in Kazakhstan and Russia. He has been part of the Dutch ‘export’ of its Civil Code as well as its ‘import’ of the brightest-and-best from among CIS law students.

The lecture assesses the numerous and wide-ranging changes that Russian law has undergone in the last two decades. Is Russia being incorporated, by choice or by chance, in regional or international law developments? Or is Russia still subject to the claims of exceptionalism (spetsifika) which it often makes—and which other countries often make for it? Equally important, is there an effective way to determine whether or not these changes in Russian law have lived up to expectations?

The lecture is organized by the Centre for EU-Russia Studies (CEURUS), University of Tartu.

See the announcement poster (pdf)

For more information about the Centre, see here