What are you currently busy with?

I’m Secretary of the Board and head of the Legal Department of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Recently, there are two issues on which I’m focusing my attention. The first one is related to the CIA detention facilities. I coordinate various actions carried out by the Foundation in this respect, attending international conferences and participating in discussions on the topic. Anyway, this issue has provoked a more wide-ranging discussion on the Parliament’s and other institutions’ supervisory powers over the activities of intelligence services. The other extremely serious problem concerns the surveillance of journalists, i.e. collecting their phone records and BTS data. I believe that a democratic state cannot approve the practice of collecting such data regarding journalists, or any other individuals, without any judicial control. In such a way a state may easily curtail media freedom.

I’m also working on recently-launched programmes and those still in development. To give an example, we’ve obtained a grant from the Stefan Batory Foundation to monitor the legislative process in the area of the justice system. Another new programme to be launched any time soon is called “Prawa człowieka a podatki” (“Human Rights vs. Taxes”). It is an initiative designed mainly as an educational project and will be run by one of the best tax specialist in the Republic of Poland. At this occasion we want to examine to what extent Polish tax and criminal-tax procedures guarantee protection of parties’ procedural rights. The cases of abuse of individuals’ rights in tax proceedings are commonplace enough to be brought by citizens of various states before the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg and I dare to say that the situation in Poland cannot be overly optimistic. We hope that the programme will play a role in identifying and resolving problems with which many people have to struggle on a daily basis.

I also work at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw. I run classes, tutorials and seminars which cover various issues of constitutional law and human rights. Since I derive much pleasure from teaching and enjoy meeting law students both at university and in the Foundation, I try to put as much energy as I can into my academic activities. For the last three years I’ve been also teaching at the Central European University in Budapest, conducting a clinical law teaching course. During the course I and my students examine a single case conducted by the Foundation. The students carry out an all-round research of the case, I monitor the results which are subsequently used in the actual casework. This is how several months ago we managed to develop and file with the Constitutional Tribunal a amicus curiae brief on the matter of constitutionality of the provisions creating the offence of defamation of the President of the Republic of Poland.

What makes you do what you do?

That’s driven by my life philosophy. I used to work at a law firm which specialised in corporate services and handling huge transactions. I know what this business is about, what pros and cons come with it. But it is my work with the Foundation that fills my need of helping others and changing the world. Working at the HFHR gives me the sense of helping real people and triggering changes of nationwide importance.

The greatest success?

I would say that making some contribution to the work of the founders of the Helsinki Committee and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights is my greatest success. When I started working at the Foundation, the Legal Department was in its infancy. Nowadays it has about a dozen full-time staff members and this may be credited to my engagement and efficiency in using legal remedies to protect human rights. We cooperate with a wide array of lawyers and law firms which support us in many different ways. We have won recognition among Polish NGOs. We are increasingly more recognisable to leading global NGOs. Our work has the actual impact on the world we live in. Monitoring projects and strategic litigation bring about real changes. We are widely seen as a reliable and solid partner whose opinion cannot be ignored.

I consider paving the way for filing amicus curiae briefs with the Constitutional Tribunal to be my personal success. This practice has been accepted and become a part of the proceedings pending before the Tribunal. Consequently, it will be a viable option for many other NGOs. It also enhances the legitimisation of decisions issued by the Tribunal and increases the validity of actions taken by the entire NGOs’ sector. The bottom line is to use it reasonably, not for the sake of promoting one’s brand but to assist the Tribunal in adjudication of cases by providing additional material information.

What gave me most satisfaction this year was the award of a Male Feminist granted by the magazine Twój Styl. It was a real pleasure being one of the five men so prized. The Foundation was involved in some landmark cases on discrimination and reproductive health. However, my instinct is that defending the Parity Act really won the award for me. The speech on the constitutionality of this Act which I gave in the Sejm, standing before the audience of more than 200 most active women in Poland and less than twenty men, is still a vivid recollection. What irritates me most is the fact that the unfavourable opinions of three constitutional law experts may waste the effort of collecting more than 150 thousand signatures in support of the Act.

The biggest failure?

All the projects which I participated in and ended up with limited success may be deemed a failure. I wasted a great deal of energy to make them happen and nevertheless they were blocked because of someone’s lack of understanding for the need of reform. For sure, my actions aiming at merging professions of advocates and legal advisers are a good example. Of course, it may be somehow comforting that with a draft of legislative changes (known as ‘the new advocacy initiative’) which I developed together with Filip Wejman and Łukasz Bajoński, a debate on the legal profession was instigated. Yet, no actual changes followed. This project made me also aware how deceitful and devious politics can be. I was engaged in the works of the Team on New Advocacy appointed by the Minister of Justice. We spent long hours discussing the shape the reform should take. Unfortunately the Minister of Justice, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, chose political expediency over the benefits of adopting a long-term reform drafted in consideration of axiological values. Consequently, following the policy of avoiding unpopular decisions and not wanting to face the criticism of the conservative members of the Bar, Mr Kwiatkowski impeded any further actions. To be honest, I do not even know any more whether I’m still at the Team or not. The Minister’s promises made only few months ago and what he’s saying now are two completely different stories. Having this experience I’ve abandoned my naive faith that sometimes for the greater good of public interest it may be worth doing politicians a favour. I’ll be far more careful next time.

What do you like most?

Taking pictures. It’s a great fun for me. I upload some of my photos on my Facebook profile. I also like my academic activities. I cherish the moments when I get deeply into a problem, when I get absorbed with it, fascinated. I often write short articles for the media, bulletins or informational websites. This legal journalism somehow requires simplification and more superficial treatment of the topic. And sometimes I just don’t have time to write anything longer. That’s why whenever I can engross myself into more research-oriented tasks I consider it very satisfying. Then, I have the feeling that I’ve digested the matter thoroughly and written down all key points involved, that it is not superficial and that through my work I’ve made some contribution to science in general. It gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Dreams for the future

I’d like to write a good habilitation thesis. This is a very serious and demanding professional dream. Still, I hope that I’ll realise it anytime soon. What I have so far is a good topic which I’ve thought-out pretty well. My second dream, more general and related to my work for the HFHR, is that our actions, including casework and monitoring, bear fruits in the form of a favourable climate for human rights development in Poland. I would like so that many people, not only those involved with NGOs or universities, but people in general, think about the importance of the rule of law, protection of human rights, constitutional values, dignity or equality along the same lines as the people within the Foundation. I believe that in 10, 15 years we’ll arrive at the point that has been reached in mature democracies, e.g. in Germany. I’m also positive that we’ll sort out all the ideological issues and solve the most complex problems and, for instance, adopt a law on civil partnerships. To me these dreams do not seem to be very idealistic or romantic. They may easily come true. After all, when I look at all the changes made in Poland in recent years, I realise that though not at a rapid pace, we’re going forward, step by step. There is also a number of people for whom human rights are a value in itself: they support our proposals and our actions.

* Adam Bodnar, PhD – a graduate of the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, also completed postgraduate studies at the Central European University in Budapest. He worked at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Since 2004 he has been involved with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, firstly as the coordinator of the Strategic Litigation Programme and then (from 2008) as Secretary of the HFHR’s Board and head of the Legal Department. In 2006 Mr Bodnar became an associate professor at the Human Rights Chair of the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw. Since January 2008 he has been a legal expert for the FRALEX expert network established by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights which compiles reports on the observance of some fundamental rights in Poland.

The article was previously published at: http://wiadomosci.ngo.pl/wiadomosci/596128.html