After his first law degree (LL.B.) in constitutional law from the University of Ljubljana, Dr. Dr. Jaklič (Oxford UK, Harvard USA) completed his LL.M. in comparative constitutional law (“The True Scope of the Power of Judicial Review: The Authoritativeness of Supreme Court Decisions”) at Harvard Law School, and then continued his doctoral (S.J.D.) studies at Harvard on a Fulbright fellowship. He worked under the mentorship of some leading constitutional and human rights law authorities in the world – Frank I. Michelman, Laurence H. Tribe, and Henry J. Steiner – and was also selected to a narrow circle of doctoral scholars led by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.
Concurrently, he also studied constitutional law under Paul P. Craig at Oxford University. This parallel research on both continents, and under the supervision of the field’s leading authorities, provided him with authentic insight into the comparative dimensions of European and US constitutional law. After completing his first doctorate at Oxford in 2008 (D.Phil. in European constitutional law), he began teaching at Harvard. During the subsequent ten years he taught for over twenty courses from his field across five different departments at Harvard University, and received teaching excellence awards from each of them. Prior to that, he also completed his second doctorate (S.J.D.) at Harvard Law School in 2011 and was awarded Harvard’s Mancini Prize (“best work in European law and European legal thought”). He has authored or co-authored over two hundred contributions in the field of constitutional law. These include leading commentaries on the Slovene Constitution and the first Slovene translation of, and commentary on, the US Constitution.
In 2014 Dr. Dr. Jaklič (Oxford UK, Harvard USA) published his acclaimed Constitutional Pluralism in the EU, the first and only monograph by a Slovene legal scholar ever published by Oxford University Press. The international legal community has described it as an “important and tremendously useful” contribution that represents the first “coherent defense of the entire ‘movement’ [of constitutional pluralism]” (J. H. H. Weiler, The European Journal of International Law), and as a “contribution of great merit” by which Jaklič “lays the foundation to nothing less than a new way of understanding law” (E. Dubout, Revue française de droit constitutionnel), etc. The monograph has become part of the syllabi of a number of distinguished European and American universities, while Harvard Law School dedicated to this work a special academic event examining its contribution.
Dr. Dr. Jaklič (Oxford UK, Harvard USA) has been invited to deliver lectures and talks at numerous leading international academic fora. At the 53rd Annual Conference of Societas Ethica, the European Society for Research in Ethics, he delivered the keynote lecture on “The Morality of the EU Constitution”, in which he focused on the question of a just and sustainable constitutional approach to immigration law across Europe. At the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, he delivered a talk on “The Democratic Core of the European Constitution”, while at a Harvard Law School faculty workshop he was invited to speak on “Liberal Legitimacy and the Question of Respect”. At Harvard College, Harvard Hall Auditorium, he delivered an invited lecture entitled “The Case For and Against Open Borders”. In Slovenia, he was the keynote speaker at an international conference held in 2015 at the Constitutional Court, while in 2012/13 he held a series of lectures at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana as a visiting lecturer from abroad.
He has been a member of numerous scholarly associations and a peer reviewer for leading international publishers and law journals, such as Hart Publishing (Oxford), ICON (Journal of International Constitutional Law), Ratio Juris, and the Harvard International Law Journal, of which he was also co-editor. He was appointed a full member of the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (the Venice Commission) for the 2008–12 term, where he delivered judgments on the compatibility of actions of European countries with the common European standards in the field of constitutional law and human rights.
In Slovenia, he has been active as an appointed member of various expert groups. Furthermore, as co-founder of the Pro Bono Legal Aid Clinic he successfully collaborated with the Human Rights Ombudsman and resolved numerous crises of individuals and families from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Every year since 2013 he has been included among the top ten most influential members of the Slovene legal profession (IUS INFO, traditional annual selection in Slovenia), while for the last two years he has been selected the most acclaimed member of the Slovene legal profession (Tax-Fin-Lex, traditional annual award).
Dr. Dr. Jaklič (Oxford UK, Harvard USA) commenced duties as judge of the Constitutional Court on 27 March 2017.
