The Forum season in the fall semester 2021/2022 was opened, still in online mode, with the promotion of Prof. Dr Dragoljub Popović’s book “Constitutional History of Serbia”, which was published this year by the renowned publishing houses Brill and Ferdinand Schöningh. The Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof. Dr Zoran Mirković, our professor emeritus and Forum Caesar, Sima Avramović, and the author himself spoke at the promotion. Professor Mirković emphasized the importance of publishing a book on this topic for our legal history in general, and especially in English. He underlined the importance of the topics of human rights and modernization and the influence

of the European model of constitutionality in the book, as well as the fact that Prof. Popović also presented the most important persons who dealt with constitutional law. Professor Avramović emphasized that such a synthesis was lacking in the legal history of Serbia and that the book fills a large gap in that sense, and that thanks to it many people in the world will be able to get to know our legal history, which we can be really proud of. He pointed out that the real challenge in writing in such books is, on the one hand, to give the reader basic information, and, on the other hand, to go into depth and give a quality analysis – and that Prof. Popović successfully completed both tasks. In the end, Prof. Popović explained that he originally intended to publish a collection of his articles on Serbian constitutional history, but that he realised that such a collection would not be clear enough to a foreign reader and therefore decided to supplement it with more detailed elaborations and explanations. As one of the main messages of the book, he pointed out that the primary virtue of every constitution is in its direct application. After the presentation of the participants in the promotion, an active discussion developed, which touched on the relationship between human rights and the rule of law, the influence of the monarch on the development of constitutional law, the debate on whether the Constitution of 1888 was the crown of Serbian constitutionalism or an over-ambitious attempt to introduce parliamentarism into a society which was not ready for it, the relationship between the constitutional history of Serbia and Yugoslavia, the importance of pre-war constitutional authors…

After the promotion of the book, a reception of new members was held, so our students Martina Miletić, Ognjen Bojanić, Natalija Stefanović and Mina Đurđević became new members of the Forum, but so did an old friend of our club, Prof. Dr Vladimir Simič from the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Law.

Next Forum: https://www.facebook.com/events/710826340311729