Vol.1, No 3, 1999 pp. 365 - 366
In Memoriam
MIODRAG JOVIČIĆ
After a long illness, Dr. Miodrag Jovičić, one of the greatest Serbian
law writers, passed away in Belgrade on October 16, 1999. Born in 1925,
Dr. Jovičić, after having graduated from the Law Faculty of the University
of Belgrade, commenced his career of a law scientist at the Institute of
Comparative Law from the very foundation (in 1955) of this one-time the
most important Yugoslav centre for foreign laws studies and connecting
domestic and foreign lawyers. By the end of 1970s, Dr. Jovičić left for
Novi Sad to hold a professorship at the Faculty of Law of the University
of Novi Sad and stayed there to the date of becoming a professor emeritus.
He was a full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, editor-in-chief
of the professional journal "Archive for Law and Social Sciences", president
of the Yugoslav Association for Constitutional Law as well as a member
of the board of the journal Facta Universitatis, Series Law and Politics,
from the first issue.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Jovičić was mainly engaged in the study
of the public power organization at all levels, from the community to the
state, predominantly using a comparative method. Thus, he has enabled a
great number of generations of our lawyers to acquire outstanding knowledge
on the foreign constitutional law and the foreign state and law theory,
primarily the constitutional law and the theory of constitutions of the
Western countries. This work resulted in the following books of his: Modern
Local Self-Government Worldwide (1962), Local Self-Government System in
England, Sweden and Switzerland (1963), Responsibility of the Public Functions
Holders (1968), Ombudsman – Legitimacy and Citizen Rights Watchman (1969),
Modern Federalism - Comparative and Law Studies (1973), On Constitution
– Theoretical and Comparative Study (1977), The Statute and the Legality
(1977), Modern Political Systems (1981) and Great Constitutional Systems
(1984).
But, when dissolution of that Yugoslavia created in 1918 came into
being by the end of 1980s, having tragic consequences for the Serbs, who
then had to look for a new state and legal solution as a framework for
their existence, Dr. Jovičić was no more only a scientist-teacher, but,
in addition, became a patriotically directed law politician devising ways
and modes of the Serbs constitutional restoration. Thus inspired, he wrote
the following studies: Where Are You Going Serbia? (1955), Regional State
– Constitutional Law Study (1996), Constitution of the United Serbian States
– Constitutional Law Study (1996). By the very end of his life he was grappling
with the problems of the history of constitutionality and published The
Lexicon of the Serbian Constitutionality – 1804-1918 (1999). A manuscript
on solving the Kosovo question, which he did not complete, is a vivid testimony
that to his last breath he was deeply concerned over his people.
Both as a writer and a man, Dr. M. Jovičić was a personality full of
honesty, sense of responsibility and humaness; as if he had stepped down
from the pages of a romance whereto he returned after his death.
M. P.
