People

David Kosař earned his M.A. in Law at Masaryk University, an LL.M. in Human Rights Law at Central European University, and a J.S.D. at New York University School of Law. In December 2023, David was appointed a professor in constitutional law and theory of state.

He currently lectures at the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science at the MU Faculty of Law. He is also leading a project regarding the effects of informal institutions on the functioning of the judiciary ('INFINITY – Informal Judicial Institutions: Invisible Determinants of Democratic Decay', 2021-2026) at the Judicial Studies Institute.

He has previously clerked for a Justice, then the Vice-President of the Supreme Administrative Court, and for a Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic. In 2016, he was the first Czech lawyer to receive a prestigious grant from the European Research Council to study the effects of judicial self-government (“JUDI-ARCH – The Rise of Judicial Self-Government: Changing the Architecture of Separation of Powers without an Architect”, 2016-2021). He received the 2016 'Právník roku' ['Lawyer of the Year'] civil and human rights award.

One of his most important publications is 'Komentář k Listině' ['Commentary on the Charter'] and 'Komentář k Evropské úmluvě o lidských právech' ['Commentary on the European Convention on Human Rights']. Among his international publications, his most significant achievements include the monograph 'Perils of Judicial Self-Government in Transitional Societies' (CUP, 2016) and the articles in the German Law Journal (with Michal Bobek), the American Journal of International Law (with Lucas Lixinski) and in the European Journal of International Law (with Jan Petrov). Most recently, he most values his articles 'Comparative Court Packing' in ICON (with Katarína Šipulová) and 'The Case for Judicial Councils as Fourth Branch Institutions' in the EuConst (with Katarína Šipulová and Ondřej Kadlec), 'The Art of Waiting Humbly: Women Judges Reflect on Vertical Gender Segregation' in the Feminist Legal Studies (with Marína Urbániková and Barbara Havelková) and 'Court Hoarding' in the Law & Policy (with Patrick Casey Leisure).

In addition to these journals, David has also published in Law & Social Inquiry, Hague Journal of the Rule of Law, German Law Journal, International Journal of Refugee Law and most of the key Czech law journals. He is also a member of several learned societies (ASIL, ESIL, LSA, ICON-S, ECPR) and the inaugural co-chair of the Central and Eastern European Section of ICON-S (2018-2024). David Kosař's research interests include constitutional theory, comparative public law, judicial issues, and human rights, including ECtHR case law, refugee law and transitional justice.

E-mail: David.Kosar@law.muni.cz

Katarína Šipulová earned her PhD at the Faculty of Social Studies, Department of European Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, and the MSt title in Socio-Legal Research at the University of Oxford. Her main area of interest is transitional justice and democratization of the Central and Eastern European countries. Katarína Šipulová worked as Head of the International Department of the Czech Supreme Court. She has been an active member of several research projects dealing with human rights as well as international law and its impact on domestic jurisprudence (e.g. international human rights treaties in national legal systems, implementation of ECtHR case law against the Czech Republic). Katarína was co-leader of a project on the application of EU law by the Czech civil courts conducted by the Supreme Court in 2012.

E-mail: Katarina.Sipulova@law.muni.cz

Šimon is a PhD student in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, where he focuses under the supervision of Vojtěch Šimíček on the Supreme Administrative Court and its role within the judicial hierarchy of administrative courts. In addition to this topic, his publications also deal with the protection of privacy in relation to the public authorities. Apart from academic work, Šimon clerked for judges at the Supreme Administrative Court and the Constitutional Court, and underwent several internships at courts of various levels, as well as at law firms. Currently, Šimon studies the LL.M. programme at the Trinity College of Dublin in Ireland.

Email: Simon.Chvojka@law.muni.cz

Senior Researcher

Lukáš Hamřík holds a PhD in International Relations and European Politics from Masaryk University, Brno. His academic interests include personalization of politics at the EU level, EU institutions, governance and democracy in the EU, EP elections and electoral behaviour. Lukáš has published in prestigious journals such as Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), Journal of European Integration, and Journal of Contemporary European Research.

E-mail: Lukas.Hamrik@law.muni.cz

Senior Researcher

Ondřej Kadlec obtained his first law degree at Charles University (2013; summa cum laude), where he also defended his doctoral thesis written under the supervision of Zdeněk Kühn (2019; the topic concerned The Role of the Grand Chambers of Czech Supreme Courts and the Plenum of the Czech Constitutional Court in Judicial Law-Making; published in 2019 by Wolters Kluwer). He also taught undergraduate legal theory for two years during his doctoral studies. In the course of and immediately after his first master’s studies, Ondřej attended a US dual-degree program. After two years in the Sunshine State, he obtained a Juris Doctor degree from Nova Southeastern University (2014; magna cum laude).

Currently, besides working with JUSTIN, Ondřej pursues his DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Dorota Leczykiewicz. In his DPhil, Ondřej further develops his MPhil thesis on the Role of the Grand Chamber in the Decision-making of the ECtHR, which he successfully defended in January 2019 (with distinction; supervised by Alison Young). From June 2014 to March 2019, Ondřej clerked at the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic. Since 2019, he is also qualified to perform the duties of a judge in the Czech Republic. Ondřej’s research interests include philosophy of law, legal reasoning, judicial application of law, or general questions concerning the development and the role of case-law.

E-mail: Ondrej.Kadlec@law.muni.cz

Michal is a PhD student in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University. In his PhD project, he focuses on judicial transparency (supervised by David Kosař). Michal already holds a master degree in law (2023) and bachelor degree in political science (2022) at the Masaryk University. In his theses, he addressed judicial dialogue, judicial resistance or populism. As part of his master studies, he also studied at the University of Helsinki. Currently, he works as a judicial law clerk at the Constitutional Court.

During his studies, he worked as a student research assistant at the Department of Constitutional Law and also at JUSTIN (supervised by David Kosař and Zuzana Vikarská). Besides that, he completed a long-term internship at the Czech Constitutional Court for Judge Kateřina Šimáčková and the Supreme Administrative Court for Judge Michal Bobek. In his initial works, he has focused on the role of courts at the domestic as well as European level, populism and democracy backsliding. His last article on these topics was published in the International Journal of Human Rights; he also published in some Czech journals Právník and Časopis pro právní vědu a praxi and on Verfassungsblog.

E‑mail: Michal.Kovalcik@law.muni.cz

Patrick is a PhD researcher at the Masaryk University Faculty of Law, both at the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science, as well as at the Judicial Studies Institute (JUSTIN) and also a part-time junior researcher at the National Institute for Research on Socioeconomic Impacts of Diseases and Systemic Risks (SYRI). He has a Juris Doctor from the Boston University School of Law, an LL.M. from Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris II, and a B.A. from the College of William and Mary. Patrick is interested in judicial decision-making, international courts, human rights, and constitutional law. His work has been published in the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, and the Nordic Journal of European Law. He has worked or interned at the Czech Constitutional Court, the European Investment Bank, and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in the Hague.

E-mail: Patrick.Leisure@law.muni.cz

Senior Researcher

Mathieu Leloup is a postdoctoral researcher at the Judicial Studies Institute at Masaryk University and an Assistant in constitutional and administrative law at University of Antwerp. His main interests lie in fundamental rights law and constitutional law, with a focus on issues of separation of powers and judicial independence. His PhD discussed the impact that the ECtHR and the ECJ have on the domestic separation of powers via their fundamental rights case law.

E-mail: Mathieu.Leloup@law.muni.cz

Kateřina Ochodková is in the second year of her PhD studies in Constitutional Law and State Studies. Her dissertation research (under the supervision of Marie Zámečníková) focuses on postal voting systems in the Visegrad Group countries. In addition, she is a research fellow at the Institute for Judicial Affairs, where she participates in the projects ‘INFITY‘ and ‚Beyond Security: the role of conflict in resilience building (CoRe)‘.

She holds a Master's degree in Law (2022) and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science (2020) from Masaryk University. She received the F.L. Rieger Prize and the Karel Schwarzenberg Prize for her master's thesis ‚The Closing Clause as a Problem of Constitutional Law‘ (under the supervision of Ladislav Vyhnánek). At both faculties, she represented students (on the disciplinary committee, the programme board and the scholarship committee) and served as a student research assistant/research assistant. As a research assistant, she contributed to the reform of the compulsory course of Political Science (under Robert Zbíral).

Outside of the faculty, she has dedicated her time to elections (as an exit poll interviewer in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022 and as a short-term election observer in Slovakia in 2020 and Hungary in 2022), as well as other areas of (constitutional) law (as an intern in the non-profit sector, the judiciary and state administration).

Her first published works are short articles on current Czech human rights and constitutional law topics in the Human Rights Bulletin of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Her first peer-reviewed journal article was co-authored with Gore Vartazaryan ‘Czech Presidents in Trouble: How Successful Can the System Be Against Presidential Misbehaviour?‘ in Acta Politologica. Her first self-authored article, ‘Correspondence Voting‘, will appear in the journal Právník.

Her current professional interests include elections, election law, and other topics 'between law and politics'.

E-mail: Katerina.Ochodkova@law.muni.cz

Senior Researcher

Samuel Spáč earned his PhD at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia) and his M.A. in Political science at Central European University in Budapest in 2013, where he received The Best Thesis Award for his research on judicial independence in Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2016 he was a Visiting Post Graduate Researcher at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. From 2013 to 2016 he worked as a project coordinator and an analyst for anti-corruption NGO Transparency International Slovakia with focus on topics of judiciary, state-owned companies and local self-government. Samuel's research focuses on institutions of judicial independence, performance of judiciaries and gender issues.

Email: Samuel.Spac@law.muni.cz

Senior Researcher

Marína Urbániková is an assistant professor at the Judicial Studies Institute (JUSTIN) and the Department of Media Studies and Journalism at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University (2016). Marína´s research interests fall into two areas: socio-legal studies (in particular, topics of gender and law, public confidence in judiciary, on-line courts and on-line dispute resolution) and media studies (in particular, journalistic autonomy, journalism cultures, public service media, security and safety of journalists, and public confidence in media and journalists). She was also the head of the research unit at the Office of the Public Defender of Rights, where she mostly conducts socio-legal research studies on equality, discrimination, and public administration.

E-mail: Marina.Urbanikova@law.muni.cz

Senior Researcher

Attila studied law in Budapest, Heidelberg, and Munich, graduated as JD in Budapest in 2005, earned his LL.M. in German Law and his PhD (doctor iuris) at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich. He defended his post-doc thesis (Habilitation) at the Vienna University of Business and Economics (Wirtschaftsuniversitӓt Wien). After teaching law at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in various positions, and at the University of Hull (UK) as a lecturer in law with a focus on European and British public law, he became senior lecturer and later associate professor at the German-speaking Andrassy University of Budapest, and happened to be the Vice-Dean between 2013 and 2016. He joined the Judicial Studies Institute in 2021.

He has around 150 publications in five different languages, is a regular speaker at international conferences, and has been a guest lecturer at different German and Austrian Universities. Besides his academic career, he has gathered considerable practical experiences in public and European law, as well.

E-mail: Attila.Vincze@law.muni.cz

Kateřina earned her Master's degree in Geography and Cartography at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University. She worked for 15 years in multinational technological companies in project and people management.

E-mail: Katerina.Hobzova@law.muni.cz

Petra earned her Master's degree in Media and Communication Studies at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. She continues there in a doctoral degree programme in Media and journalism studies. She focuses on topics related to gender and media.

E-mail: Petra.Pichanicova@law.muni.cz