Jan Mazur

In the paper, I explore the topic of judicial corruption as a source of judicial stress and the role judges and lawyers may play in it in Slovakia. The paper compares assumptions about judicial corruption, based on in-depth interviews with judges and lawyers (i. e. "how judges and lawyers believe the judicial corruption works"), and the leaks of communications of a prominent Slovak criminal with multiple judges and lawyers (i. e. "how the judicial corruption actually works" according to investigative journalism and published criminal investigations). The leaks led to multiple criminal investigations and convictions, providing credence to the leaks. I find that the nature of the judicial corruption was thus twofold; (i) low-stakes, relying on the social capital of judges, lawyers, and "fixers", and established through common socialization and interests; (ii) relying on cash payments facilitated by specific trust brokers-"fixers", including payments through virtual trusts or trusted secondary service providers. Fixers appeared to influence not only procedural and meritorious decisions on behalf of their "clients", but they were also acting in their own interest on self-initiated legal cases at certain familiar courts, thereby enriching themselves. The paper provides details of suspected corrupt practices, including the mechanisms of paying bribes.

Equity-based crowdfunding shows promising potential for funding the micro, small and medium sized enterprises. So far, only several countries have adopted a specific regulation of crowdfunding, while there is no crowdfunding-specific regulation (harmonization) on the EU level. As we already observe diverging tendencies of the crowdfunding market and its regulation in respective member states, there seems to be an untapped potential of harmonizing certain aspects of capital markets law, such as Prospectus Directive. We will assess the needs of the crowdfunding market and reflect them against the Prospectus Directive and its implementation in selected member states. The assessment serves as a basis for discussion on harmonization potential.

Po dvoch dekádach od komplexnej reformy územnej samosprávy na Slovensku silnejú hlasy volajúce po novej reforme územnej samosprávy (verejnej správy), či po "dokončení" procesu decentralizácie. Túto potrebu vníma aj samotný štát, čoho dôkazom sú prebiehajúce práce na reforme verejnej správy, ktoré sa stali predmetom značnej kritiky, hoci sú zatiaľ len v internej fáze.3 Okrem štátu pripravujú svoje návrhy aj záujmové združenia samospráv.4 Súčasne zo strany štátu silnie tlak na udržateľné fungovanie samospráv, najmä z dôvodu nových, finančne nekrytých úloh, inflačných tlakov na ceny energií či stavebných prác, ako aj nesystémovým znižovaním príjmov samospráv.5 Pritom to boli práve samosprávy, na ktoré sa prenieslo množstvo úloh súvisiacich s organizáciou úloh počas pandémie COVID-19, či pomoci utečencom z Ukrajiny.

It’s been a few years since Facebook (Meta) instituted its Oversight Board as a new quasi-judicial and regulatory body of one of the most important contemporary cyberspaces. It’s long established that social media platforms, such as Facebook, pose certain challenges to democracies as they, among other issues, allow for spread of fake news and hate speech, shift our perception of reality, or create echo chambers. In reaction to talks of regulating similar platforms, Meta’s self-regulatory attempt of instituting the Oversight Board appears to tackle the issue of content moderation by the platform itself. As the content moderation is one of the main sources of Meta’s problematic reputation (taking down posts, pages of various more or less known persons), the board is potentially significant. The paper analyses the board’s mandate, governance structure and procedures. We look at standard elements of independence of decision-making bodies (such as courts) to establish whether the Oversight Board is structured in a way conducive to independent decision making. We conclude that that structure of the Oversight Board fulfils some of the elements of the de jure judicial independence, however there is a room for improvement. Independence of the Oversight Board from Meta is a vital element of the institution, however we detect connections and dependencies on Meta (Meta needs to agree on changes of the Charter as well as the Bylaws, Meta was profoundly involved in the initial selection of the members, etc.). The whole structure of Oversight Board is heavily impacted by the private law institutes – trust, company, contracts – which might not be able to fully facilitate all the needs of an independent quasi-judicial body. The private structure, lacking necessary participatory mechanisms, does not permit the Oversight Board to gain necessary legitimacy. We also review the Oversight Board’s setup in light of the EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act (DSA), which represents one of the most comprehensive regulations of the social media platforms, including content moderation issues. We conclude that the Oversight Board would also not be compliant with requirements set forth in the DSA. After the adoption of the DSA, a question of compatibility of the Oversight Board with the out-of-court dispute settlement bodies opened.

The aim of this paper is to describe a relatively new legal form of the simple joint stock company introduced into Slovak company law in 2017 and evaluate whether it may indeed be a suitable corporate vehicle for new companies with highly innovative potential (startups), or alternatively assess whether the legal form is suitable for other legal and business use cases; and explore and identify potential issues.Moreover, this paper provides an overview and legal analysis of the legal regulation of the simple joint stock company form in comparison with other legal company forms. The attractiveness of some of the key elements of the simple joint stock company’s regulation is verified by an empirical statistical method from public databases. Additionally, the article also provides an assessment as to what extent the identified objectives of the policy maker in relation to the introduction of the new legal form were achieved.

In the name of judicial independence, a concept whose name is nearly magical in its capacity to draw reflexive devotion, the European Union (“the Union”) and Council of Europe1 have used their bargaining power to impose nearly uniform structural systems on the most recent entrants with little regard for their own individual legal cultures and social conditions. This strategy ignores the reality that nations with the most successful systems of judicial independence, including those of “old Europe,” reached their own judicial * In 2006, I wrote a paper called The Administrative Judiciary’s Independence Myth, 41 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1191 (2006), in which I argued that administrative law judges (“ALJs”) are not independent in the usual, structural sense. I noted that ALJs have some attributes in common with civil law judges, whose job is to apply rather than make law, as common law judges do. Since 2006, I have had the opportunity to work on various ethics issues with developing judiciar...

The paper represents a contribution to the ongoing discussion on regulating social media platforms (SMP) and especially Facebook, mostly fueled by a recent series of scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, which highlighted the recognized problem of Facebook’s lack of accountability. In response to the scandal, which coincided with long-expected wide-scale implementation of the EU’s GDPR, Facebook introduced a series of measures on its platform, such as improved traceability of advertisers, or greater power over one’s own data. Besides, Facebook was put under scrutiny of competition law authorities, mainly the German Bundeskartellamt. Taking into consideration all the regulatory approaches, the question remains whether sufficiently effective design for holding the SMPs accountable has been established or not. In the paper, we first outline the accountability issues SMPs currently face, namely the data handling and privacy issue, the platforms’ impact on political processes, or related...

Facebook is recognized as a technological giant with possibly unprecedented power. It is assumed that recent large-scale scandals show just a glimpse of what might happen if the company fails to recognize its power. Voices calling for regulation are stronger than ever. Yet, before we move towards proposing a new regulation, a proper analysis should be done in order to establish what kind of socio-economic power Facebook has and whether the existing regulating mechanisms are capable of preventing and solving potential problems. We focus on three regulating mechanisms: data protection, consumer protection and competition law, which are presented as the relevant regulating mechanisms also by the literature. In order to assess the suitability of these mechanisms, we present a brief case study of the recent Facebook’s redesign. In 2017, Facebook introduced Explore Feed in a few selected countries. As a consequence, posts of pages (including prominent media, politicians, etc.) were shifted from a default wall - News Feed, into a secondary wall - Explore Feed; unless the pages owners decided to pay for sponsored posts shown on the default wall. We assume that such an ad hoc change of service might have had serious consequences. We analyze the existing regulatory mechanisms and their suitability to make Facebook (or other social media platforms) accountable for some of the problems and find that overall there exists a wide regulatory gap in capturing the main problems of platforms, one that may be filled with a new proposal of public supervision over the platforms.

EN: In the context of large investment debts in local government infrastructure and unfinished fiscal decentralization, a local development impact fee was adopted into Slovak law 5 years ago. With its arrival, there was an increase in financial resources of municipalities and cities for their development, especially in connection with new development projects in the city. However, in addition to the allocation function, the fee also fulfills the function of internalizing costs associated with the necessary infrastructure at the developer, whose project is to benefit from this new infrastructure, thus enabling a more targeted fulfillment of the allocation function. The aim of the paper is (i) to provide a comprehensive view of the local development fee with a link to the theoretical basis of financing infrastructure investments, (ii) to evaluate the legal mechanisms of its operation and practical aspects of its use, and last but not least (iii) to outline solutions to identified shortcomings. In this paper, we offer a conceptual shift towards more intensive cooperation between local governments and fee payers in the use of the development fee, which, however, encounters the current legal limits.

SK: V kontexte veľkých investičných dlhov do infraštruktúry miestnych samospráv a nedokončenej fiškálnej decentralizácie bol pred 5 rokmi do slovenského právneho poriadku prijatý miestny poplatok za rozvoj. S jeho príchodom došlo k zvýšeniu finančných zdrojov obcí a miest na ich rozvoj, najmä v nadväznosti s novými developerskými projektami v meste. Poplatok však plní okrem alokačnej funkcie aj funkciu internalizácie nákladov spojených s potrebnou infraštruktúrou u developera, ktorého projekt má z tejto novej infraštruktúry ťažiť, čím umožňuje adresnejšie plnenie alokačnej funkcie. Cieľom príspevku je (i) poskytnúť ucelený pohľad na problematiku miestneho poplatku za rozvoj s prepojením na teoretický základ financovania infraštruktúrnych investícií, (ii) rámcovo zhodnotiť zákonné mechanizmy jeho fungovania a praktickú stránku jeho využitia, a v neposlednom rade (iii) načrtnúť riešenia identifikovaných nedostatkov. V príspevku ponúkame konceptuálny posun smerom k intenzívnejšej spolupráci samospráv s poplatníkmi pri využívaní poplatku za rozvoj, čo však naráža na aktuálne právne limity.

The paper represents a contribution to the ongoing discussion on regulating social media platforms (SMP) and especially Facebook, mostly fueled by a recent series of scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, which highlighted the recognized problem of Facebook's lack of accountability. In response to the scandal, which coincided with long-expected wide-scale implementation of the EU's GDPR, Facebook introduced a series of measures on its platform, such as improved traceability of advertisers, or greater power over one's own data. Besides, Facebook was put under scrutiny of competition law authorities, mainly the German Bundeskartellamt. Taking into consideration all the regulatory approaches, the question remains whether sufficiently effective design for holding the SMPs accountable has been established or not. In the paper, we first outline the accountability issues SMPs currently face, namely the data handling and privacy issue, the platforms' impact on political processes, or related monopolistic positioning. We ascertain that common denominator of these issues is the platforms' design, which is created to achieve business objectives, while imposing substantial negative externalities on the society. Alongside, we review the platforms' reactions, i.e. the self-regulatory measures adopted by the platforms in 2017-2018. We also specifically focus on the evaluation of the competition law * This contribution is the result of the project implementation APVV-16-0553 Metamorphoses and innovations of the corporations´conceptcorporations´concept under conditions of globalisation (Premeny a inovácie konceptu kapitálových spoločností v podmienkach globalizácie). as one instrument of regulating certain aspects of the platforms, especially in light of the recent German Bundeskartellamt decision on Facebook. We claim that most of the measures and current instruments, although improving the lack of accountability, fall short of addressing the core issue of Facebook's status-absence of scrutiny over the platform's design.

In this mapping, we provide an overview and analysis of the relevant national policies and legal instruments in Slovakia, with the objective of identifying and describing policy or legal instruments that have a potential of introducing stronger sustainability within the corporate behavior, i.e., trade, investment, corporate governance instruments or otherwise. We primarily assess company law, including assessment of various business and non-profit legal forms and social enterprises, financial markets law, public procurement law, tax law, transparency requirements, sustainable development policies, investment policies, and the implementation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the activities of the national contact point.

Crowdfunding, patriaci medzi alternatívne finančné nástroje, vznikol ako dôsledok rozvoja finančných technológií. V rámci preskúmavania akčného plánu únie kapitálových trhov bola v prvej polovici roka 2017 zverejnená verejná konzultácia, ktorá má okrem iného priniesť odpoveď na otázku, ako môže Európska komisia podporiť ďalší rozvoj riešení FinTech v oblasti nebankového financovania. Cieľom únie je okrem iného vytvoriť optimálne prostre-die pre investorov zo širokej verejnosti, aby s využitím finančných technológií mohli priamo investovať vlastné finančné zdroje do podnikateľských, ale aj sociálnych projektov. Európska komisia sa tak v súčasnosti zameriava na analýzu podmienok a potrieb prostredia, ako aj na určenie vhodnej právnej regulácie. Tomuto cieľu by mal prispieť aj stredoeurópsky projekt CROWD-FUND-PORT, do ktorého je zapojená aj Slovenská republika. Projekt je financovaný z programu Interreg Central Europe.

Mandatory disclosure of agreements instrument has been a relatively positive and successful instrument of public control of handling public funds through its more than five years history. However, a huge amount of data, frequent opacity of their connections, or the absence of machine-readable forms of contracts pose challenges for the control, which where partly addressed by non-governmental organizations. Programs of Open Government Partnership worldwide strengthen the emphasis on the participation and crowdsourcing in controling of contractual provisions, consultations of contract creation, especially the sector-standardised contracts, or feedback in contract execution, for instance by tracking the warranty and milestones of contracts with objects that allow the involvement of large amount of persons. There is a specific experience with some of these trends in Slovakia, which mainly calls for improved work with data and greater involvement of external users. The article proposes that legal academia participates through existing platforms on deeper categorization of contracts, following analyses of contracts as particular solutions of situations, and standards creation. Contracts with problematic content should be consequently subjected to the control by the non-governmental organizations and media.

Judicial corruption represents a critical issue for proper functioning of the rule of law and thereby democracy. It erodes trust in justice and fairness, disrupts distribution of property and access to rights and ownership. It may lead to decreased market confidence and smoothness of market operations, and increased transaction costs for parties. This thesis set an objective to explore the topic of judicial corruption and the role lawyers may have in corrupt practices in Slovakia with a view of proposing interventions to reduce the opportunities for corruption. Ju- dicial corruption is understood in a wide sense as a misuse of judicial power for private gains. The thesis first establishes the context of the judiciary in Slovakia and provides literature re- view, along with an annexed summary of a handful of prosecuted cases of judicial corruption. Second, a content analysis of a series of semi-structured, in-depth and in-person interviews with lawyers and judges describes the nature and practices of the judicial corruption. Finally, the thesis features a policy analysis of contributing factors and proposals towards reducing corrupt practices.
It is found that judicial corruption has two layers: internal, which allows certain judges to unduly influence their peers, and external, which represents an interaction of lawyers and the court officials and which is typically the driver of the internal corruption. The corruption may seek to achieve (1) favorable meritorious decision, in which case it is targeted at all levels of court structure; (2) procedural delays (e.g. re-appointments of experts, repeated sickness), effec- tively simulating unlikely or unjustifiable meritorious decision, in which case it is targeted most often at the courts of 1st instance; and (3) occasionally, corrupt act may seek to benefit both parties or take place in non-litigious proceedings (e.g. hastening of procedures etc.).
The system of judicial corruption appears to be built on social capital of lawyers and judges in position of power who exchange the social capital for specific favors or other corrupt acts to influence substantial or procedural position of one or both of the parties of litigation. The social capital serves not only as a means of exchange but also as an indicator of trust. The social capital is built and sustained systematically over time through socialization, joint interest-based clubs or events, through favors and gift provision, as well as through family ties and related nepotism.
There appear to be two parallel types of legal services: one with lawyers operating on market principles, providing regular legal services, and one with lawyers who, besides or instead of regular legal services, provide and signal special and undue access to courts and judges (also known as litigation managers). Even the most networked lawyers (called litigation managers in relation to corrupt practices) know only a limited number of judges in the court hierarchy, therefore networks of judges are equally important.
The culture of tolerance towards favors and gits provision creates a sense of indebtedness in judges who are later more susceptible to favor the attorney (judge) and their demands. Alt- hough classic bribery also takes place within the judiciary, it is thought to be less widespread as favors-based corruption. Still, bribery takes place not only through cash payments, but also through affiliated or third-party subcontractors of lawyers, but also through discounts or free provision of goods and services to judges and their relatives.
Numerous policy changes are already at place in Slovakia, therefore the low-hanging fruit of anti-corruption efforts within judiciary was to a large extent collected. Certain administrative policies are still problematic, such as very low remuneration of court clerks and other adminis- trative staff with high turnover, although the most problematic problem appears to be lack of moral core of legal professions. As appropriate ethical education and appropriate understand- ing of professional loyalties are largely missing from legal professions, more “natural” loyalties to friends, colleagues or family members tend to prevail. It is therefore imperative to strengthen the moral core of the legal professions by legal ethics education, prioritizing the ethical criteria upon selection procedures of judges and at entry exams of attorneys, as well as enforcing a healthy relationship between judges and attorneys through disciplinary proceedings.

As a result of combining participatory sensing tools with large amount of participants, i.e. crowd, crowdsensing tools emerge. These can be deployed via mobile networks to a large amount of inhabitants of municipal areas. Crowdsensing tools enhanced with semantic legal categories can serve the municipalities to decrease transaction costs of reporting issues with public services by the crowd and automatically assign the issue to a competent authority for solving. These tools prove to have vast smart city and learning potential. I describe the status quo of crowd-based participatory sensing and propose connecting them with semantic categories that may highly increase their efficiency, usability and application potential. I consider a case study of the system Odkaz pre starostu.sk (Message For a Mayor) and demonstrate our proposal on the system.

This dissertation deals with the regulation of crowdfunding, with a focus on equity- based crowdfunding, with the objective to analyze its justifications, proportionality and legal barriers. Through literature review I draw a list of key regulatory risks and related interventions attached to crowdinvesting, concluding that main regulatory issues include information asymmetry, risks of platform failure, retail nature of investors, poor performance of projects or companies, conflicts of interest or data privacy. Conducted legal analysis of the EU financial markets regulation framework, as well as of several Member States, shows significant barriers to the market development, such as lack of clarity on investment services, unsuitable MiFID exemptions, lack of single passport for bespoke regulatory frameworks, lack of harmonization of prospectus requirements for low-value crowdinvesting offerings. Furthermore I undertake empirical research of the largest European equity-based crowdfunding platforms, showing a discrepancy in standards across these platforms. Key findings include lack of standards in conducting due diligence of companies, unclear regulatory positioning or status of the investment services actually provided by the platforms. In the final chapter, I present policy proposals including key elements of bespoke regulation. Finally, I find that optimal regulation of investment- based crowdfunding should recognize its unique risks, which warrants a specific proportionate regulation tailor-made to address crowdfunding as such.

The Bratislava 2030 City Strategy was prepared in 2022 and is divided into analytical and strategic parts. The strategy is oriented on achieving three components of overarching vision:

Bratislava is a city made for people.
It is a caring city that creates and ensures the conditions for a dignified life for all who choose to live there, regardless of their living situation or background. The city is guided by the principle of cooperation and communicates with its inhabitants. The city promotes equality, inclusion and access to opportunity.

Bratislava is a healthy and vibrant city with scale.
It is developing as a city of short distances to multiple centres, where services, amenities and culture are available within individual neighbourhoods. The City is responsible with its natural resources. It offers quality public space, diverse culture, and accessible opportunities for exercise, recreation, and healthy lifestyles.

Bratislava is a city ready to meet the challenges of the future.
It is a resilient and confident city that is successfully asserting itself in the context of Central Europe. It is a strategically, professionally and efficiently managed city with modern institutions and a digital, data and technical infrastructure that meets the needs of the future. It is successfully reducing the impact of the climate crisis.

Jedinečná publikácia podáva zrozumiteľným jazykom odborne spracovanú tematiku právnej úpravy startupových spoločností so zameraním sa na praktické otázky z pohľadu právnej regulácie finančného a obchodného práva, ako aj práva duševného vlastníctva. Publikácia má potenciál stať sa praktickým sprievodcom, ktorý obsahuje komplexné informácie o špecifikách správy startupových spoločností, investičnom procese a nastavení vzťahov startupových spoločností s externými investormi, zakladateľmi a zamestnancami, zároveň informácie o ochrane kľúčových aktív startupových spoločností v podobe duševného vlastníctva.