Jurij Toplak

[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Toplak is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts[12] and serves as the co-chair of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL) Freedom of Expression research group.

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.

[24] As a consultant to governments or international organisations OSCE, European Union, Council of Europe, Greco, and UNDP he worked in Uganda,[25] Canada, United States, France, Finland, Latvia, Monaco, Serbia,[26][27] Montenegro,[28] Malta, Ukraine,[29] Romania and elsewhere.

He is known to side with the underdog and defend victims and weaker parties in disputes,[35] and is the most successful author of human rights appeals in Slovenia.

[39] 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.

In 2014, after two years of litigation for access to information, he obtained statistical data on schools and published it,[58][59] which triggered a heated public debate.

[60][61] Toplak had long publicly opposed punishing of Internet users who discussed election candidates during the electoral silence.

[64] In March 2021, Toplak disclosed in the Daily Express that the European Court of Human Rights had stopped sharing its files with the public.

[36] In a re-trial, Novič was found not guilty, and based on the appeal written by Toplak, the Supreme Court in 2022 dropped the fine imposed on Kovačič.

[73] The event featured 52 of the world's leading constitutional law scholars including Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law School, Oxford professor Jacob Rowbottom, Adrienne Stone, Janny Leung, Pierre de Vos, Richard Calland, Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, RonNell Andersen Jones and the ECHR judges András Sajó and Boštjan M Zupančič.

Since then, the event featured speakers economist Jeffrey Sachs, the European Commission vice-presidents and commissioners Maroš Šefčovič, Mariya Gabriel and Dubravka Šuica, Oxford Law School dean Mindy Chen-Wishart, Baroness Ruth Deech, András Sajó, Dimitry Kochenov, Klaus Mainzer, and Felix Unger.

[77][78][79][80][81][82] 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.

[88][89] Jurij's maternal grandfather was Edvard Sitar, an inventor,[90] a founder and administrator of several schools,[91] a songwriter, and a partizan poet,[92] tortured and imprisoned by Italian fascists.