Academic CentreI am delighted to prepare the preface to the Compendium II of the 9th International Scientific Conference Revisiting the Limits of Freedom While Living Under Threat. It is an enduring privilege, which makes me feel truly honoured.
This conference saw the participation, beyond the best of Latvian legal scholars, of jurists from different EU jurisdictions gathering in Riga to address top-notch legal issues. Nine editions of International Conferences truly made the Faculty of Law a European hub for law debates, an indispensable forum, which highlights the most crucial juridical problems, current trends and comparative analyses.
This year, the conference topic was properly chosen to mark a cornerstone principle of the Western political tradition, for which European countries have, in their history, fought heavy battles to establish peace, protect freedom and human rights in their societies. That principle states: freedom can never be taken for granted and must be constantly preserved. Therefore, the rather troubling times that are challenging the continent – on the eastern borders because of the war, whilst on the southern borders due to the huge immigration waves – call jurists, not only politicians, to ponder the balance of freedoms. What a burdensome task!
This year’s compendium once more abounds with noteworthy and compelling contributions. Most of them in their titles highlight words like fundamental rights, restrictions of rights, borders, emergency, expulsion, freedom of expression and freedom of movement, populism, crimes (even those committed by public officers), social purpose of private law, care for the elderly and many more. I dare to say that these are the terms of legal inquietude. The pages dedicated to them clearly envisage the risks to our rights and freedoms, the price that European legal jurisdictions could be compelled to pay, as they face those threats.
The efforts of the authors are directed toward finding new rules that would be adequate for handling the unsettling changes without causing any harm to the constitutional rights and freedoms. The reasoning of their research is rigorous, the conclusions they reach are convincing, the frequently offered comparative analysis is valuable.
Politics is doomed without law and legal frameworks, this is the lesson learned by the world, – not only Europe, – in the aftermath of the French Revolution in which jurists, on the path of the the Enlightenment philosophy, played an apical role in arguing and designing an architecture of legal principles, which brought the societies to the Rule of Law, often paying a blood tribute.
The compendium I am introducing is a coup de maître in the juridical literature, another magnificent achievement of the University of Latvia Faculty of Law in the European landscape.
Carlo Amatucci
University of Naples Federico II
This preface has been published in the second collection of research papers in conjunction with the 9th International Scientific Conference of the Faculty of Law of the University of Latvia “Revisiting the Limits of Freedom While Living Under Threat. II”, 9–10 November 2023. Riga: University of Latvia Press, 2024. 232 pages.