By Browning Brooks
FSU Communications Group
They risked their lives to discuss constitutional law with American experts.
But a harrowing 30-hour journey over a mountain from Sarajevo to a Croatian airport -- a drive that normally takes four hours -- and then a trip to the United States was worth it, said justices of the Constitutional Court of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
As they begin the difficult work of laying the foundations of their new nation, "It is most important to meet with American experts to come up with solutions to many basic questions," said Mirko Boscovic, a former justice on the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who spoke in Tallahassee through an interpreter.
"We feel that your 200 years of experience in American courts would be helpful in the implementation of our court."
Five of the six Bosnian members of the new Constitutional Court traveled to the FSU College of Law June 16 for a workshop on intergovernmental relations. They also met with the Florida Supreme Court. The visit was made possible through a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the American Bar Association's Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI), and reflects the developing international focus of the law school.
CEELI, co-founded by FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte in 1990, has sent 2,000 volunteer attorneys, judges and law professors to help formerly Communist nations create the rule of law. Twenty countries are being served, said CEELI Executive Director Mark Ellis, an FSU College of Law alumnus.
"This is a remarkable group of individuals who made a treacherous trip at great risk because they felt it was important to work together," with those who could give them expertise at all levels of government, he said.
But how do you preside over law and order when your country is at war?
On a day when the news was filled with reports of increased fighting in Bosnia, the justices stressed their determination to proceed with their work building the future, optimistic that the war would subside soon and they would be able to sit as a court and take their first cases.
The Constitutional Court -- with two Muslims, two Croats and two Serbs - - will have as its partners the Supreme Court and the Human Rights Court, Boscovic said.