Jurij Toplak

Jurij Toplak and Harvard University students in 2017 discussing the Cuban revolution

Jurij Toplak (born 1977) is a constitutional scholar, election law, and disability law expert. He is a professor of law at the University of Maribor^[1] and a visiting professor at the Fordham University School of Law in New York.^[2] The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe published his legal comments.^[3][4][5][6] He serves as the co-chair of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) Freedom of Expression research group. Toplak is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.^[7]

Toplak received an LL.M. degree at Central European University in Budapest under the mentorship of Michel Rosenfeld and Andras Sajó. His doctoral dissertation supervisor was Daniel H. Lowenstein.

He was a member of the National Election Commission of Slovenia from 2000 until 2012. Since 2006, he has been a board member, and he is a vice-chair of International Political Science Association Political Finance and Political Corruption Research Committee.^[8] At the age of 23 he published his first book on redistricting, for which Slovenian Lawyers’ Association awarded him with a “Young Lawyer of the Year” award.^[9] In 2006 he published (together with Klemen Jaklic, then a lecturer at Harvard), the first translation of United States Constitution into Slovene. Together with Daniel Smilov, he co-edited a book Political Finance and Political Corruption in Eastern Europe (Ashgate, 2007). In 2011, he led a research on disability discrimination, which evaluated responsiveness of over 200 municipalities to freedom of information requests submitted by blind persons.^[10] He classified preferential voting electoral systems.^[11] Pippa Norris and Bernard Grofman are among those who referred to his works,^[12][13][14] and he is among the top ten most cited Slovenian legal scholars.^[15] He is currently a member of the Ombudsman's Human Rights Council^[16] and of the government's Commission for Equal Chances in Science.^[17]

As a consultant to governments or international organisations OSCE, European Union, Council of Europe, Greco, and UNDP he worked in Uganda,^[18] Canada, United States, France, Finland, Latvia, Monaco, Serbia,^[19][20] Montenegro,^[21] Malta, Ukraine,^[22] Romania and elsewhere.^[23]

Jure Toplak led numerous successful impact litigation projects and wrote complaints and appeals to Slovenian Supreme Court and Constitutional Court, which improved human rights protection of disabled persons, candidates and voters. Based on the constitutional appeal he wrote for a group of paraplegics, the Constitutional Court ruled in 2010 that “as many as possible” polling stations need to be wheelchair accessible.^[24] Next year he wrote another appeal for three wheelchair users, and in 2014 the Constitutional Court annulled part of the election law and ruled that all polling stations must be accessible for persons with disabilities.^[25][26] In 2014, after two years of litigation for access to information, he obtained statistical data on schools and published it,^[27][28] which triggered a heated public debate.^[29][30] Toplak had long publicly opposed punishing of Internet users who discussed election candidates during the electoral silence.^[31] In 2011, he wrote two successful appeals for such Facebook users.^[32] After the 2014 elections, he wrote an appeal to the Supreme Court for a voter, who was fined 100 euros for publishing a comment on Facebook on a day before elections. In September 2016, the Supreme Court dismissed the fine and ruled that comments and discussions are not within a definition of illegal propaganda.^[33] In 2015, when the Constitutional Court was deciding whether the parliamentary seat of a parliamentarian due to his conviction was constitutional or not, the court copied arguments from Toplak's Amicus Curiae brief.^[34] During the 2018 parliamentary election, he helped a Green Party candidate list rejected by the election commissions and the Supreme Court returned it on the ballot.^[35] When the Constitutional Court invalidated election districts legislation in 2018, Toplak is mentioned or cited 17 times in the court's decision and judges' opinions.^[36] In 2019, the Constitutional Court invalidated the local music quota law based on the appeal written by Toplak.^[37]

In 2017, Jurij Toplak wrote a challenge to the referendum results for a voter and activist Vili Kovačič, which led to the first-ever public hearing by the Supreme Court of Slovenia and first-ever annulment of referendum results on 14 March 2018.^[38] On the same day Prime Minister Miro Cerar resigned.^[39] A minute later, a leading television program Pop TV, which broadcast the resignation, referred to Jurij Toplak as “the silent winner of the court ruling.”^[40] Slovenian lawyers voted Jurij Toplak among 'Ten most influential lawyers in Slovenia' in 2018,^[41] 2019,^[42] and 2020.^[43]

In January 2020, the European Court of Human Rights communicated with the Slovenian government the case Toplak and others against Slovenia.^[44] The case concerns accessibility of polling places and voting. Jurij Toplak wrote the appeal for the appealant Franc Toplak, his uncle, and for other voters with disabilities.^[45] Toplak wrote a class action for the Slovenian Disability Rights Association, which asked for a review and reform of the polling places accessibility, and for a 54 million Euros of compensation for the past discrimination of persons with disabilities.^[45]

His father is a law professor, diplomat, and university rector Ludvik Toplak, who served as the president of the Slovenian parliament's chamber during Slovenia's independence, democratisation and constitution-making. His mother is attorney Rosvita Toplak. Jurij's paternal grandfather was a grapevine producer, agricultural cooperatives' organizer Janža Toplak, who in June 1941 hosted the first anti-Nazi resistance meeting in the Ptuj region,^[46][47] and shortly after that Gestapo arrested, tortured,^[48] and then killed his brother Franc Toplak, a university student of agriculture.^[49][50] The Toplak family in Mostje near Juršinci dates back to 1610.^[51][52] Jurij's maternal grandfather was Edvard Sitar, an inventor,^[53] a founder and administrator of several schools,^[54] a songwriter, and a partizan poet,^[55] tortured and imprisoned by Italian fascists.^[56][57]

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