Latvian legal periodicals have a deep and interesting history, but it has not been sufficiently researched, as concluded by Supreme Court senator and legal researcher Jānis Pleps during a discussion on the post-national awakening legal press held at the National Library of Latvia on January 5.

The senator emphasized two important tasks: first, it is essential to recover the knowledge about legal publications from the 1990s by digitizing them and featuring them in discussions about the legal system; second, lawyers must support the legal periodicals by subscribing to and reading them.

The initiator of the discussion, “The Rebirth of the Legal Press after the Restoration of Latvia’s Independence,” was Arvīds Dravnieks, Director of the Institute of Public Law, who himself had been the editor of several publications in the early years of Latvia’s restored independence. The stories of the editors and authors of legal publications evoked a vision of the complex world of rapid change 30 years ago, when lawyers had to reorient themselves to the reality of a newly legal state and a democratic legal system. The legal publications of the time were able to stay one step ahead and helped to steer Latvian legal thinking in the Western direction.

Arvīds Dravnieks spoke about the complex publication of the magazines Temīda, Latvijas Jurists, and Juristu žurnāls, Judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union Ineta Ziemele spoke about the fresh breath of life brought to Latvia by Cilvēktiesību Žurnāls, Senator Rudīte Vīduša spoke about the high-quality legal journal Likums un Tiesības, Gatis Litvins spoke about the artistically striking Notāru žurnāls, which had only one issue, Rasma Zvejniece spoke about Supreme Court Bulletin, which helped to preserve the Latvian legal language during the Soviet years and served as a guide through the jungle of laws as to their application during the national awakening period and the first years of independence.

Egils Levits, former Minister of Justice and President of Latvia, gave an overview of the legal press in interwar Latvia and in exile. Dagnija Baltiņa, Director of the National Library of Latvia, also participated in the discussion.

The discussion on the Latvian legal press was organized as a continuation of the thematic exhibition "The Legal Press in the Latvian Legal Space" in the Latvian National Library's Economics and Law Reading Room, which It was organized to mark the launch of the legal journal Jurista Vārds in its new format. The exhibition retrospectively traces the development of the legal press over three centuries or 145 years. The exhibition has been well attended and therefore still continues in January.

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211