The use of information technology enables state authorities to prosecute perpetrators and process personal data on an unprecedented scale and in an unimaginable way, in the course of taking measures and actions to prevent, detect and investigate criminal acts. One of the disputed processing is the nonselective mass monitoring of electronic communications in the form of retention of communication data, which, given the technological development and social importance of electronic communications, can on occasion reveal more about an individual than the content of the communication itself. This form of data processing represents interference with guaranteed human rights and freedoms, and need to be legally regulated in order to prevent their violation. The authors analyze the legal framework for retention of communication data and access to retained data for the purposes of criminal proceedings in Serbia, especially in light of the relevant practices of the CJEU and ECtHR.

The rise of digital technology has driven progress but also enabled large-scale national and cross-border consumer law infringements. Unlawful digital practices threaten the internal market and the EU’s goal of high consumer protection. Directive (EU) 2020/1828 on representative actions aims to enhance enforcement by balancing access to justice and litigation abuse. Its key contribution is to ensure that consumers can seek injunctions and redress in all Member States. However, while a step forward, the Directive does not fully resolve issues of standing and funding, which hinder access to justice and effective enforcement. Addressing these challenges depends on the creativity and flexibility of national legislators, lawyers, and courts to make representative actions more practical and effective. This article examines the impact of the Directive and argues that additional efforts are crucial to overcome its limitations and ensure meaningful consumer protection across the EU.

In every democratic society, the role of the assembly is of utmost importance, as it is a political body whose main task is to represent the will of the people. While societies and states have evolved over the centuries and became more complex, both ancient and modern democracies have faced similar issues, the most important one being the creation of efficient democratic mechanisms that will truly allow the voice of the people to be heard and enacted. In this paper, the authors will focus on the evolution of the assembly in ancient Greece, in an attempt to draw conclusions that would also benefit the modern world.

Since ancient times, theft of sacred objects has been recognized as a qualified form of theft, as a typical property crime, but also as an act of sacrilege. In medieval Serbian law, the canonical and secular regulations are found in the two typikons and the Zakonopravilo (Nomocanon) of Saint Sava, as well as in the later compilations of Rhomaian (Byzantine) law of the Serbian redaction during the reign of emperor Dušan – Matthew Blastares’ (Abbreviated) Syntagma and the so-called Law of Emperor Justinian. Between these two great waves of reception of Rhomaian law, King Milutin’s Banjska and Gračanica charters summarily regulate church theft.

This paper examines the implications of Saudi Arabia’s accession to the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in August 2023. Saudi Arabia joined only Parts I and II, postponing a decision on Part III pending further analysis of its compatibility with Sharia law. Two months earlier, Saudi Arabia enacted the Civil Transactions Act (CTA), its first civil law codification, largely replacing Sharia in contractual and non-contractual obligations. However, the CTA lacks conflict rules, leaving Saudi Arabia without legislation on conflict-of-law rules for sale contracts. This paper explores Saudi Arabia’s options for joining Part III of the CISG, the possibility of choosing foreign law or the entire CISG before Saudi courts or in arbitration, and compares the CISG with the CTA. It assesses the legal and practical challenges of harmonizing Saudi Arabia’s new legal framework with international sales law.

Freedom to provide services is specific in relation to rest of the fundamental freedoms of the European Union (EU) internal market in a way that, save for certain specific situations, it applies to cross-border activities of a commercial nature only in situations in which (provisions regulating) other freedoms are not applicable. Apparently, this so-called “residual nature” of the freedom to provide services makes understanding the borderlines between free provision of services and the rest of fundamental freedoms of the EU internal market even more important, since it causes additional need for establishing such difference in various situations. This article aims to provide additional guidance in that regard. It does so primarily in the context of the ratione materiae scope of application, by scrutinizing some of the most relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and offering corresponding comments and conclusions.

Understanding how brokers choose clients for vote-buying exchange is one of the key issues in explaining the success of these illicit practices. Norm-based theories seek an answer to this question based on individuals’ values and beliefs, which would make them suitable candidates for vote-buying. A recent addition to this literature suggests that there might be a distinct authoritarian feature among the targeted voters. Building on the findings of this study, this paper examines the relationship between authoritarian tendencies and the offer of clientelist exchange in six Western Balkan countries. Overall findings vary significantly across countries: in Montenegro, Serbia, and Albania some associations were found, albeit not all in the theoretically predicted direction. In Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo, and North Macedonia authoritarian tendencies were not related to an offer of clientelist exchange. The results point to a highly contextualized importance of authoritarian tendencies for the success of clientelist exchanges.

Informal practices are rather widespread in post-Yugoslav societies, representing a complex problem with significant social, economic and political implications. The study investigates the factors that determine or contribute to shaping young people’s benevolent attitude towards certain types of informality, by exploring the determinants of informality justification or permissiveness towards certain forms of informal practices. Firstly, justification of informal practices are observed as a reflection of youth political socialization, which imply their relation to the political system and democratic values. Secondly, this type of justification potentially stems from their rational evaluation of institutional performance by estimating the necessity of informality as a mechanism to navigate the perceived inefficiencies of formal institutions. By examining these dimensions, the aim is to detect the extent to which these two sets of factors contribute to young people’s justification of informality in the post-Yugoslav context.

Despite the aspiration to comprehensively regulate legal relations, legislators can hardly avoid the occurrence of legal gaps, which may also arise due to the longevity of a statutory act that can no longer properly keep up with the development of a specific area of law. In Serbian Private International Law, the methods of filling legal gaps are regulated in Article 2 of the 1982 PIL Act, which provides three sets of principles: principles of the Act itself, the principles of the Serbian legal order, and the principles of PIL. However, certain international sources of Serbian PIL have engendered an unusual effect of hierarchical relationship with statutory conflict-of-laws rules, thus generating a different perception of gap-fillers (i.e. nationality principle, weaker party protection). In the paper, the author examines these issues, considering (to some extent) how legal gaps emerge in this branch of law, as well as the limits of characterization.

This article analyzes the functioning of party patronage and clientelism in the centers for social work. Building on previous research, based on qualitative research conducted in 2023 in Serbia, we examine parasitic relations of informal and formal institutions and their ability to nihilate the legal system and create a parallel or dual normative system. The initial step in institutional capture is party patronage and the deprofessionalization of public services. We further demonstrate how party cadre employed in public institutions create and reproduce clientelist networks and divert the working of the institutions. Finally, most public sector employees quietly comply with the expectations to work in the network’s interest, creating a new culture of fear and professional and civic passivity. We argue that informal institutions of clientelism parasitize formal institutions and that capturing institutions and society transforms the internal norms of clientelist networks into social norms, creating a backbone of normative dualism.