On Monday, 28 April 2014, the Center for Private International Law of the Hague Conventions at the Faculty of Law in Niš organized a lecture on the topic “Adaptation, Transposition and Substitution in Private International Law”. Upon the invitation of Prof. Mirko Živković, the lecture was given by dr.iur.sci. Slavko Đorđević, Assistant Professor of the Law Faculty in Kragujevac and a member of the Working Group assembled by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia to draft a new Private International Law Act. Adaptation, transposition and substation as the legal institutes have not been subject to extensive scientific consideration in the domestic Private International Law doctrine and they are largely considered to be terra incognita for Serbian legal practitioners. For these reasons, it has been a real pleasure to hear some new ideas presented by Professor Đorđević, who has devoted a significant part of his academic career to exploring these issues. As a matter of fact, these three legal institutes (in author’s opinion) were the subject matter of his doctoral thesis, defended in 2010 at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade (under the mentorship of Professor Gašo Knežević).
At the end of his lecture, Professor Đorđević presented original ideas for resolving these issues in practice. In fact, Serbian judges are not explicitly authorized by legislator to modify the conflict rules or make new substantive law rules in order to rectify the contradictory or unfair result arising from the application of different laws. However, despite the lack of an explicit legal provision, Professor Đorđević asserts that such authority generally stems from the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, as it is based on the rule of law principle (Article 3 of the Constitution), the principle of equality (Article 21 of the Constitution) and the principle of direct applicability of the norms on human and minority rights (Article 18 of the Constitution).
