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Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H) is notoriously hard to govern. Scarred from a bloody war in the 1990s after the collapse of Yugoslavia, the country's constitutional order emerged in international peace talks in the United States. What later became famous as the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) might have stopped the war but, in our opinion, sowed the seeds for complex democratic problems today. As we will show in this text, the ECtHR's judgments represent a false hope for democracy in B&H, because ethnopolitical parties in B&H will not agree on how to implement the ECtHR's judgments and the Office of the High Representative will not take a more active role in this context. We therefore argue against an earlier contribution on this blog by Woelk (2023), who suggested that the solution for the implementation of the ECtHR's judgments should come from within the country, as we will show, ethnopolitical actors do not have a real interest in implementing these judgments. To put it bluntly, change from within is, alas, pie in the sky. It is much more likely that nothing changes and the powers that are remain the powers that will be.

The philosophy of Gustav Radbruch made an immeasurable contribution to the development of the concept of the rule of law. The part of Radbruch's philosophy that still has a great influence on thought about the relationship between justice and mere legality is certainly his Formula, which can be reduced to the venerable stance of lex injusta non est lex.[1] Simply put, according to Radbruch's Formula, any law that is 'unjust to an intolerable degree is not legally valid and should not be applied by courts. In this text, the author finds a similarity between Radbruch's Formula and provision VI/3(c) of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) and analyzes the content of the aforementioned provision, which regulates the possibility of initiating a concrete review of the constitutionality of laws by ordinary courts. The text analyzes what the aforementioned provision of the B&H Constitution stipulates and what opportunities it offers to ordinary courts when applying the law. It also analyzes the extent to which the potential of the B&H Constitution has been used by ordinary courts in the legal system of B&H.

The text is a review of the book Ka filozofiji prava kao filozofiji ljudskih prava written by Jasminka Hasanbegović and published by Dosije studio, Belgrade, 2021.

The paper discusses the relationship between Marx's philosophy and the rule of law. The classical view of Marxism and the rule of law tells us that these are opposite notions. In this paper, the author presents different views in the context of the relationship between Marx's philosophy and the rule of law in relation to the classical Marxist view of the rule of law. Also, the author in this paper shows that Marx'sunderstanding of the rule of law does not necessarily contradict the modern concept of the rule of law, and also, Marx's understanding of the rule of law is related to the problem of building the rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author conveys Marx's critique of 'law' as a critique of the process of building the rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, the author shows that Marx's critique of 'law' is not necessarily an obstacle to the implementation of the modern concept of the rule of law.

The aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between the regulation of state property and the rule of law, and for this purpose the authors analyze the Decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH No. U-4/21 which declared certain provisions of the Law on Forests of Republika Srpska unconstitutional. The paper discusses not only the issues of the relationship between state property and the rule of law, but also the issues of judicial activism and the rule of law. In particular, the authors analyze the extent to which the courts, and in this particular case the Constitutional Court of BiH, in order to protect the rule of law, may interfere in the competences of the legislature. In this context, the authors consider the justification of judicial activism of the Constitutional Court of BiH in case U-4/21, considering whether the Constitutional Court of BiH has the right to protect the principle of the rule of law in such a way. Finally, the authors explain why judicial activism is necessary when it comes to the relationship between constitutional and legislative power and why judicial activism of the BiH Constitutional Court was necessary in the case U-4/21.

The rule of law is, along with democracy, one of the main concepts of the 21st century, while Islam is, along with Christianity, the most populous religion. On the other hand, Muslim states face the problem of accepting the rule of law as a concept that originated in the West. The paper discusses the compatibility of the rule of law and Islam as well as the reason why the rule of law is not developed in Muslim countries. The authors investigate whether the underdevelopment of the rule of law in Muslim countries is inherently related to Islam or to the socio-economic circumstances that led to it. The authors of the paper put forward the thesis that the cause of the underdevelopment of the rule of law in Muslim countries is primarily caused by socio-economic circumstances, and not because of the very concept of Islam as a religion.

This paper analyzes the constitutional position of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) between constitutional nationalism and human rights. In its judgments in Sejdić and Finci v. BiH, and Zornić v. BiH, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that the BiH Constitution was not in line with the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). Namely, the privilege of the three constituent peoples in the Constitution of BiH, the ECHR was assessed as contrary to the prohibited discrimination prescribed by the ECHR. In this sense, the paper analyzes the current Bosnian constitutional model of a form of consociational democracy or constitutional nationalism. The authors analyze the presumption of the ECtHR in terms of the (non) existence of a legitimate goal for maintaining discriminatory provisions in the Constitution of BiH. Also, the paper analyzes the importance of the implementation of the ECtHR judgment for the future of the rule of law in BiH.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged countries around the world to preserve public health which entailed limitations of human rights. We have seen around the world that these limitations were adopted in way that was not in accordance with the proportionality principle, which led to misuse of the state of emergency in general and the interventionism of unseen proportions. The goal of this paper is to present how Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a country in transition, faced the COVID-19 pandemic and give an overview of the events that represent human rights and freedoms violations and abuses associated with the state of emergency.