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VIKTOR ZOLTÁN KAZAI fundamental rights considerations a part of scientific thinking at the time? Or was your approach inspired by the international scholarly discourse instead? K. B.: My interest in constitutional law and human rights was sparked when István Kukorelli entrusted me with a column in the magazine Élet és Tudomány (Life and Science). It was somewhat of a challenge: I had to write short summaries about constitutional rights every two weeks, constrained in length and by a deadline which was quite unusual for me, the university man. There was no particular response from academia. However, documents released since reveal that my writings were followed by the U.S. embassy. And once I got into a pretty strange situation. I don’t even remember why, but a policeman stopped me, checked my license, looked at me and said, “Yeah, you're the one who writes those articles in Elet és Tudomany.” Well, he didn’t say it in an appreciative tone, still, I was glad that my articles had at least some effect. The magazine itself was pretty free-spirited. I was only called in once to the editorial office and asked to revise one of my articles. I categorically rejected this and declared that if they don’t publish the original piece, I will cancel the column. This would have been an embarassment for the editors, since they had already announced the column in advance. Finally, they published the original article. Candidate’s dissertation V. Z. K.: You defended your candidate’s dissertation [candidatus scientiarum, coming close to a PhD disseration, although much fewer instructors were awarded the title as is the case today with the PhD that is practically a must for university positions.] in 1986 with the title: Pitfalls of dividing penal power. Treatise on the future of the criminal trial. In this work you discuss the question whether it is worth dividing the court hearing into two parts, by separating the sentencing phase from the finding of guilt. You arrive at the conclusion that no such reform would be commendable, in fact, designing such a system would require ample knowledge of social siences, disrupting the criminal justice system. Your colleagues, including Kálmán Györgyi, András Sajé or Péter Hack have praised this work. Indeed, a review on your dissertation was also published in Magyar Pszicholôgai Szemle (Hungarian Psychology Digest). Based on the reviews it seems to me that the main source of your disseration’s success was the special approach you applied: by this time you had joined the international scholarly discourse, and were therefore familiar with foreign academic literature, in addition, you could rely on the findings of social sciences, since you had also studied sociology. Was this a conciously chosen approach on your part? Am I correct in thinking you expressly wanted to overhaul the traditional methodology of legal sciences? « 26 ¢
