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VIKTOR ZOLTÁN KAZAI
expansion. But my enthusiasm guickly subsided as I soon became aware that I have
no ambition or strength to see this through. Teaching is what I like, the students
are great. I realized that the renewal of this university is not my job. And I must
admit I am not overly optimistic when it comes to the future of CEU. I fear this
exile from Budapest has halted a process of development. But I sincerely hope I’m
not right on this. It would be nice if the mission would remain and CEU would not
turn into a small, less significant US private university, fishing for paying students.
Nonetheless, I didn’t fall into a depression. I’m glad that I could continue
teaching. This turn of events was not the end of the world for me.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
V. Z. K.: If one takes a look at your list of publications, it is clear that you consistently
write about criminal procedural law, international criminal law and their human
rights aspects. While not alien to these fields of research, your work on confronting
the past, namely, the criminal law aspects of the communist and Nazi dictatorship
nevertheless stand out. I wonder why you are so interested in this topic. Is this just
another field of interest for you, or is there something more personal behind it?
K. B.: I have no idea if there is a specific reason. This was actually the topic,
more specifically national socialism and the lawyer’s responsibility, that I wanted
to research in Freiburg at the end of the eighties. I already knew the international
literature on the topic by that time, however, in Hungary nobody was working on
it. At the time of the change of political system I was thinking that the Hungarian
legal system should be taken in a different direction. One of my goals was to
implement the Strasbourg case-law, the other was the legal clarification of what we
will be rejecting from the past in this new political system. Meanwhile I realized
that in and of itself, Nazi or communist criminal law is not all that interesting.
I was much rather interested in understanding the logic underlying totalitarian
regimes. Yet it was during these months in Freiburg that the offer from the
Ministry came in, so nothing came of this research.
At the same time, this topic never quite left me. József Antall aked me to consult
on the draft Zétényi-Takacs bill on the extension of the statute of limitation for
crimes committed in the previous regime that went unpunished. It was there that
the materials compiled in Freiburg were put to good use, for I knew more about
this topic, namely the problem of retroactivity, than others at the time.
But as to why this topic re-emerged: maybe it’s just a coincidence. A few years
earlier when my friend János Kőbányai returned from Israel, as the editor of Múlt
és Jövő (Past and Future) he approached me to write a piece for the magazine.
That was when I started to get back into the literature on these topics. I now really
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