The 14th Summer School of the Constitutional Court of Georgia was held. For ten days, twenty-two law students from various Georgian universities learned about the practices of the Constitutional Court of Georgia, the United States Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. They also participated in moot court sessions. The action was supported by the USAID Rule of Law Program and the Council of Europe Office in Georgia.

President of the Constitutional Court of Georgia Merab Turava, Rule of Law Program Manager at the USAID/Caucasus Rusudan Tabatadze, USAID Rule of Law Program Chief of Party Giorgi Chkheidze, and Project Officer at the Council of Europe Ushangi Tabatadze addressed the students with welcome remarks. 

In his welcome notes, Court President Turava spoke about the history of the Summer School and emphasized that the school has gotten more and more popular over the years. 

Giorgi Chkheidze noted: “For more than nine years, USAID has supported the Summer School, which is a unique opportunity for you, Georgia’s future legal professionals, to improve your legal knowledge. The participant selection process was very competitive this year – over 400 applications were submitted, with only 22 being selected through a three-stage selection process. This shows the importance of the content and the speakers of the School.” 

Assessing the event, Rusudan Tabatadze said: “Investing in the education and professional skills development of law students is extremely important for USAID. Tomorrow you will be the judges, lawyers and prosecutors in this country, and the investment in your education today will give us tangible results tomorrow in the rule of law in Georgia.”

The School participant students had the opportunity to meet and learn from two experts invited by the USAID Rule of Law Program from Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, Professor Daniel Rodriguez and Associate Professor Matthew Kugler, as well as Caroline Fredrickson, a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who also served as the President of the American Constitution Society. The key topics covered by the Program’s invited experts included: standards for the limitation of human rights in times of health crisis; the role of judicial review in the American system and questions of constitutional interpretation; and the existing practice of data protection, surveillance, and the right to privacy in the United States.

The students also heard from other local and international experts, including: Levan Maisuradze, constitutional law expert/lawyer at the Georgian National Communications Commission (topic: surveillance and the right to privacy: jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of Georgia); Davit Gabekhadze,Head of Legal Provision at LEPL Operative-Technical Agency (regulatory framework of covert surveillance in Georgia); Giorgi Burjanadze, Deputy Public Defender of Georgia (overview of the constitutional complaint of the Public Defender of Georgia regarding the legal norms on covert surveillance); Lela Janashvili, Head of the Personal Data Protection Service, and Ia Kipiani, Head of the Oversight Department over Law Enforcement Authorities of the Personal Data Protection Service (data protection, surveillance, and the right to privacy); Teimuraz Tugushi, Justice, Constitutional Court of Georgia (introduction to the constitutional justice system in Georgia: important aspects of constitutional adjudication); Veronika Bilkova, Venice Commission Member/ESIL Vice-President, Faculty of Law, Charles University (standards of limitation of human rights in times of health crisis); David Erdos, Associate Professor, University of Cambridge, Co-Director, Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (data protection, surveillance, and the right to privacy); Wojciech Sadurski, Polish and Australian scholar of constitutional law (judicial review in Europe); and Irakli Ksovreli, Head of the Legal Provision and Research Department/Constitutional Court of Georgia (standards of limitation of human rights in times of the Covid-19 pandemic: jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of Georgia).

At the end of the School, the participants were awarded with the certificates by the President of the Constitutional Court of Georgia Merab Turava, USAID Rule of Law Program Regional Hub Attorney Irina Khakhutaishvili and Council of Europe Office representative Gvantsa Gedenidze. Four successful graduates of the Summer School (Luka Nishnianidze, Irakli Jojua, Maria Mdzevashvili and Giorgi Melikidze) will take a fully paid internship and get employed at the Constitutional Court of Georgia.