On the eve of Constitution Day of the Republic of Lithuania, on 23 October 2026 at 9:00, we invite you to the annual international academic and practical conference on constitutional law at the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.
Today, the Constitution of Lithuania as a whole is made up of at least five constituent constitutional documents, upon which three decades of constitutional jurisprudence have laid layer after layer of new meanings and ideas. The conference asks whether these invisible dimensions of the Constitution in fact determine more than what is written in its text, and whether its multi-layered nature is a strength of the Constitution or a instrument for manipulating it.
The Constitution in the Case Law of the Highest Courts
How the Constitution is interpreted and applied today will be discussed by those who do it every day. Prof. Dr. Vytautas Mizaras, Justice of the Constitutional Court, will speak about explicit and implicit constitutional interpretation: what flows from the Constitution directly and what is derived from it based on its spirit. Prof. Dr. Skirgailė Žalimienė, President of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania, will show how the Constitution helps to decide administrative cases. Mindaugas Kukaitis, Chair of the Lithuanian Bar Council, will present the Constitution from another angle, speaking about how it works in a lawyer’s practice, where the task is not to interpret it but to rely on it in defending human rights and freedoms.
The Convention as an Invisible Part of the Constitution
The Constitution cannot be understood in isolation from the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Constitutional Court has repeatedly stated that the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which interprets the provisions of the Convention, is relevant, as a source for the construction of law, to the interpretation and application of Lithuanian law.
The conference offers a rare opportunity to hear Dr. Arnfinn Bårdsen, Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights, who will speak about living constitutions: how the meaning of the Convention and of national constitutions evolves in response to new geopolitical challenges, how the dilemmas of a democracy capable of defending itself are resolved, and why the security argument does not in itself justify restricting human rights and freedoms.
Dr. Gediminas Sagatys, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, will review the most recent Strasbourg judgments in cases against Lithuania that are linked to the jurisprudence of our Constitutional Court. These are cases in which the Constitutional Court had already been approached before the application to Strasbourg, yet the intervention of a supranational institution was still needed for the applicants’ rights to be vindicated. In this context, the individual constitutional complaint as an effective remedy, and the points where the case law of the two courts intersect, deserve particular attention.
Do the EU and National Rule of Law Principles Always Coincide?
In April this year, the Full Court of the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in Case C‑769/22 Commission v Hungary, which for the first time gave normative content to the values enshrined in Article 2 TEU. For constitutional law it is one of the most significant developments of recent years. Even more intriguingly, the Court held that Article 4(2) TEU protects only a conception of national identity that is compatible with the values of Article 2 TEU, including the rule of law. In doing so, the Court of Justice implicitly established an informal hierarchy between two norms of EU primary law.
At the conference, Dr. Luigi Malferrari of the European Commission’s Legal Service, who represented the Commission in this case, will present the origins of the case and the Commission’s strategy and aims, discussing what the Commission expected when it brought the action and whether such an outcome could have been anticipated. Dr. Rimvydas Norkus, Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union, will discuss what impact this judgment, already described as a landmark ruling, will have on the national constitutional systems of the Member States, and how the understanding of national constitutions should – or should not – change as a result.
Is It Easy to Rebuild a Dismantled Rule of Law?
The aforementioned ECJ case concerned a Hungarian law restricting minors' access to information about same-sex relationships. That law was adopted during a period of democratic backsliding in Hungary. Today the situation is different: for over half a year now, Hungary has been trying to return to democratic values and restore the rule of law. Yet it has turned out that tearing down was far easier. Developments in Hungary follow one another in quick succession, news emerges almost daily, and the question of restoring the rule of law will occupy scholars for a long time to come. All of this will be presented and assessed by one of Hungary’s best-known constitutional scholars, Prof. Dr. Zoltán Szente of the Institute for Legal Studies at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences. What is happening in Hungary matters to everyone who cares about democracy in Europe, and the conference invites you to learn more about it.
From the History of Constitutions to the Architecture of Our Constitution
The academic core of the conference will take a view across centuries and continents. Prof. Dr. (HP) Alfredas Bumblauskas of Vilnius University will offer a historical perspective on the multi-layered nature of constitutions, focusing on the particular features of the first written constitution in Europe. Prof. Dr. Wim Voermans of Leiden University, author of the best constitutional law book of 2024, will share remarkable stories of the world’s constitutions: how constitutions are born and what they really tell us about the communities that write them. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jolita Miliuvienė of Mykolas Romeris University will present the architecture of the Constitution of Lithuania and discuss how it shapes the Constitution’s meaning. Finally, Professor Emeritus Dr. Egidijus Jarašiūnas, former Justice of the Constitutional Court and former Judge of the Court of Justice of the European Union, will share his insights into the problems of constitutional interpretation that persist to this day.
The event is organised by Mykolas Romeris University together with the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Bar Association and the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.
Programme here.
The event is partially funded by the Research Council of Lithuania under the Measure for Funding the Organisation of Research Events (project No. P-MOR-26-35).