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“THE ‘ETERNAL CANDIDATE’ — THAT WAS ME": INTERVIEW WITH KAROLY BARD ——o— VIKTOR ZOLTÄN KAZAI' THE UNIVERSITY YEARS: THE STUDENT AND YOUNG TEACHER The student years Viktor Zoltán Kazai: Your name as a researcher, teacher, and politician is eponymous with criminal law, but even more so with criminal procedural law. What drew you to this area oflaw? What sparked your interest in criminal procedure? Käroly Bärd: Honestly, I stumbled into criminal law by pure chance. As a student, I frequented quite a few students’ associations. For example, I regularly attended the civil law students’ association, because it was headed by Gyula Eörsi, who made the whole enterprise really entertaining. Ithink Iwas more interested in civil law at first. But then one evening Kriszta Palänkai (nee Kriszta Kratochwill) called and asked if I wanted to bea student assistant at the Department of Criminal Procedure. This is how I became a student assistant, then came the National Conference of Scientific Students’ Associations and when I graduated, I was asked if I would like to stay and teach at the Department. So at the very beginning, I was not particularly intrigued by criminal law at all. Perhaps after all these years, Ican finally confess that I didn’t get an excellent on my criminal law final exam either. But there is no doubt that over time, I have gradually grown to like this area of law. V. Z. K.: You graduated as a lawyer in 1975, which means you were a university student in the first half of the 1970s. What was the Law Faculty of ELTE like back then? Can you mention some specific examples of student life at the time that may be surprising for those born after the change of political regime? K. B.: One likes to refer to this era as the Brezhnevian Stagnation. Yet university life was not so bleak. Students made up a kind of binary demography. There was this group who prepared for the exams but were otherwise more interested in having a beer and playing football. Meanwhile, there was also a vibrant cultural life at the university. I remember we had three filmclubs, a jazzclub and much more. This is no coincidence: there were many in our year, who never wanted to become lawyers, for example, Miklós Vámos, János Szikora or János Kőbányai. I was ! Zoltan Kazai Viktor, doctoral candidate, Central European University. Translation by Petra Lea Lancos. +19 +
