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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 « 38 «
