A new study by former Czech Sen. Martin Mejstrik counts 30 percent of Czech judges as former members of the party. Others put the figure at 50 percent. Either way, the highest levels of the Czech judiciary are ripe with former Communists.

But even worse might be the "pervasive corruption at the highest levels of the judiciary which has little to do with the legacy of communism," a prominent legal scholar said to me. "Younger judges -- the majority at the bottom of the food chain and untainted -- are pressured or marginalized by methods used in Communist times and fine-tuned by a new corrupt mafia."

"The Communist judges and the new mafia do not love each other, Marc. … They have a relationship based on a common evil past. … There are Communist judges who have actually learned, and are now more honest than others in judgeships that were not in the party," says the legal scholar. "They collude with the highest levels of government across party lines.

"It is all very complicated. The current system is an outgrowth of a system set up by Franz Wehr -- the father of the First Republic's constitution (1918-39) -- and Hans Kelsen -- who believed in Reine Rechtslehre -- legal formalism that leaves no room for the social context. … It is a tradition in Czech lands -- also in Austria and Germany -- long before the Communists. But the Communists found it a useful way to control society."

In the early 1990s President Vaclav Havel and a reform Czech Parliament created a Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court -- the highest court in the land -- has 15 members, each appointed to a 10-year term. Each judge may serve two terms. The Constitutional Court, the cleanest of the Czech courts by far with virtually no former Communists, often finds itself under fire and ignored by the lower courts and their cohorts in government.

The Czech legal system is split into the aforementioned Constitutional Court; a Supreme Court (64 judges -- 60 percent former Communist -- who serve for life. Chief Justice Bruseva was NOT a communist); a High Court (70 percent Communist and the most corrupt) split into administrative locations in Prague (60 judges) and the eastern-city of Olomouc (15 judges); 14 Regional Courts (200 judges -- 30 percent Communist) and lower-level District Courts (2,500 judges -- almost no Communists). The numbers of judges fluctuate.

According to the Mejstrik Report -- Mejstrik was a leader of the student movement during the Velvet Revolution in 1989 -- "The judicial system of the Czech Republic struggles with a bad reputation. Well-known is the excessive length of civil and administrative proceedings, leading to thousands of complaints to the European Court of Human Rights over the past several years." Also criticized is the "interference of the executive sphere within the judiciary."

Among the Czech Republic's roughly 3,000 judges, there are several hundred former members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, deemed a "criminal organization" by Act No. 198 of the Czech Republic from 1993. The report also finds:

-- The number of former Communist Party members is significantly higher at higher court levels.

-- None of the courts in the country above district level provided Sen. Mejstrik with information on the membership of their judges in the Communist Party. According to the research, at least 40 percent of all chairs and vice chairs of Czech courts are former members of the Communist Party.

-- There are at least five active judges in the Czech Republic who do not have appropriate law school education. They carry degrees from the so-called Law School for the Working Class or The National Defense Corps School of the Communist regime.

-- The Prague High Court of Justice was selected as a model example. Data was collected for 50 out of 92 judges; 32 were members of the Communist Party until the "Velvet Revolution" -- among them the chairman of the Court, Judge Vladimir Stiborik; at least two of the three vice chairmen -- Judges Jaroslav Bures and Stanislav Bernard -- and the head of the Penal Law Section, Judge Vladimir Vocka -- who in 1997 stopped the prosecution of top-ranking Communists Milos Jakes and Jozef Lenart, who were being tried for high treason in connection with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.

Vojtech Filip, collaborator of the Communist StB (State Secret Police), who is the current chair of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and vice chairman of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament, has been a member of the Communist Party since 1983.

In 1992 Filip asked the district court for a ruling that he did not knowingly collaborate with the secret police. The witnesses in court were three of his commanding state security officers. No other witnesses were called. Mejstrik found that the judge, Milan Tripes, who ruled in favor of Filip, was a candidate for membership in the Communist Party in 1988-1989 -- imagine the absurdity.

According to my legal source, "The political past has less influence than the present, even though we outside see the former Communists as the bigger problem. … In some cases, unfortunately, the former Communists might be more modern than the current mafia."

When Vaclav Havel left office in 2003 he prepared a list of clean candidates for high courts. They were thrown out by current President Vaclav Klaus -- himself a Communist enabler. The Senate has meanwhile rejected 20 of Klaus's high court nominees.

It isn't enough to reject Klaus's incompetent nominees.

The current crop of corrupt and Communist judges should be sent out to pasture for good.

There they can ride out their lives -- grazing the land instead of defiling it.

(UPI International Columnist Marc S. Ellenbogen is chairman of the Berlin, Copenhagen and Sydney-based Global Panel Foundation and president of the Prague Society. A supporter of the anti-communist underground, he has advised political candidates and is a founding trustee of the Democratic Expat Leadership Council.)

(e-mail: [email protected])

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