Jusletter IT

It is in the nature of any legal act and particularly of the constitution that there exists a difference between the law as a text and the law as a process of interpretation and implementation of this text. This antinomy was already brought to the attention of the audience on 15 April 1920 by Leonid Pitamic in his opening lecture Pravo in revolucija (Law and Revolution), starting the lectures at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana. The mentioned antinomy clearly shows that, behind the text, there is always a man making decisions i.e. a man who is also a moral person. It is true that law and morality are not identical, even radical differences exist between them, but they are also so closely tied that the law loses its legitimacy if the basic constitutional and legal values are forgotten. When interpreting the constitution and the statutes and making decisions, one eventually has to rely only upon himself. This makes the lawyer’s work attractive and challenging, but at the same time assigns to him a burden and a responsibility. The text partly corresponds to the festive speech held by the author in the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia on 17 December 2015, marking the Day of Constitutionality.