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“THE ‘ETERNAL CANDIDATE’ — THAT WAS ME”: INTERVIEW WITH KAROLY BARD duly reported in the press. But I was never close enough to any of the parties in power to have them nominate me. V. Z. K.: You were nominated as a member of the International Criminal Court in 2006, however. Why weren't you elected? K. B.: It was pretty clear from the beginning that I as a European male candidate stood little chance. And quite soon I regretted saying yes to the nomination. Nevertheless, the election procedure commenced and I had to leave for New York and the Hague to start campaigning. What was truly surprising to me was that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was so underprepared and disinterested in the election. There were three or four Hungarian winemakers in the Hague at the time and the Ambassador was more interested in advertising them, while the others were ecstatic about the tulip exhibition and found no time to help. In New York, every nominee was accompanied by their ambassador, I on the other hand, was assisted by a nice young woman who, however, was barely above the rank of a doorman at the embassy. But all in all, it wasn’t a big deal. I got over it quite quickly. I thought of the hussle of moving to the Hague and the kind of cases I would have had to deal with... Career as an ‘attorney’ V. Z. K.: Before getting back to your academic career, allow me a small detour: I must admit, I was a little surprised to learn that you also worked as an attorney. K. B.: Well, yes. Look, when I left the Ministry I only had a part time job at the Department for Criminal Procedure. You know, this all goes back to the eighties when Janos Németh somehow arranged for the amendment of the Act on higher education. This is how teaching communities were able to form law offices. For example, the members of the 1 working community of lawyers were János Németh, Imre Békés, Lajos Vékás, Gábor Faludi, Ferenc Kratochwill and myself, later, we were joined by Péter Polt. I started working in this community of lawyers in 1987 because at the time a succesful defence of ones candidate of the Academcy thesis was acknowledged in lieu of the bar exam. I actually had some very interesting criminal cases and the pay was really good compared to what I made as a lecturer. However, | left this community in 1990. Then later I got back into the profession when I left the Ministry and a childhood friend asked me to join his law firm. He worked on civil law and commercial law cases, but sometimes a few criminal cases also cropped up. Think: corruption cases of foreign companies or where an Austrian CEO had inadvertently shot the beater during a hunt in Hungary. However, besides COLPI (Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute) I hardly had time for my work as an attorney. After a while, I only assisted from time to time when the case had an international dimension. +35 +
