John A. Gealfow

The chapter, which is a part of the book Legal Ethics written by authors under supervision of the professor Tomáš Sobek, is dealing with the term kantian ethics and with the question of presence of legal norms in the current law which are explainable solely by kantian ethics (because competing ethics do not provide reasonable justification). Despite criminal law being considered as one of the main domains of kantian ethics, my findings show just the opposite - modern criminal law is much for influenced by the ulititarian ethics. Kantian ethics, on the other hand, has much stronger influence in the field of property rights and rights of a person (especially while connected to the right of human dignity).

This article presents results of empirical research focusing on the question of how Czech district courts provide their judgments to individuals based on their requests using right to access to public information. I present datasets on how the courts adhered the deadlines prescribed by the law, the length of their delay, reasons why some courts refused to provide the information and also the amount of payment requested for the information. The basis of the article is, therefore, empirical, but its conclusions are normative, as its core is critique of two branches of case law of the Czech Supreme Administrative Court, which unnecessarily restrict right to access to public information without corresponding improvement on the side of other countervalue.

The article analyzing the current approach to anonymisation of personal information in the judgments of Czech courts which I have finished in a co-authorship. This article criticizes the way in which Czech courts as public subjects obliged to provide information based on the Czech statute on free access to information for the reason that the courts fail to recognize that there can be no dogmatic answer about what type of personal data should be anonymised applicable to all cases. The courts fail to recognize the conflict between two human rights – right to privacy and right to the access to information. The courts must provide reasoning, which right should outweigh the other in particular case based on the circumstances of the information asked (e.g. information about publicly active person) and on the circumstances of the person demanding the information (motivation of the person and the purpose information will be used for, also the public interest in having the information public), same as other case specific factors. Authors conclude that without proper reasoning about these criteria the constitutional right to the access to information is violated.

The chapter on argumentative fallacies is part of the university hand-book written under supervision of the professor Tatiana Machalová designed to provide students of the Academic Writing course compact and thorough study material. This chapter is the result of my long-term interest in the theory of argumentation. I tried to introduce students to problems of argumentative fallacies and at the same time refute myths that are very common among both, students and general population. I tried to do so in understandable and illustrative way while using many examples. Example of the refuted myth is that the attack on the person (ad hominem fallacy) can in some cases be despite its a priori negative connotation part of legitimate argumentation.