Sad news

Prof. Kino Lazarov, PhD, one of the great Bulgarian jurists and administrative law scholars and Director of the Institute for the State and the Law in 1994 – 1995, has passed away at the age of 84.

Prof. Kino Lazarov was born on 27 November 1933. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". He served as a judge at the Pleven District Court for nine years. He then completed a full-time doctoral programme in administrative law and administrative procedure at the Institute of Legal Sciences at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, under the academic supervision of Acad. Petko Stainov. In 1969 he was engaged as a consultant at the Supreme Court. From June 1970 to January 2006 he successively held the positions of research associate, senior research associate (second grade) and professor at the same institute. He headed the Department of Public Law at the Institute of Legal Sciences at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the sector of the same name at the Unified Centre for Legal Sciences, which united the Institute of Legal Sciences and the Faculty of Law of Sofia University. He was also a long-standing lecturer at the Faculty of Law of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" and at Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski". He undertook several specialisations in France.

He is the author of more than one hundred scholarly works – monographs, textbooks, studies and articles. His scholarly writings have been published in France, Germany, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Many of his works remain in demand and are still used by practising lawyers today. In November 2017 some of his principal works were reissued in updated form – "Принудителни административни мерки", "Недействителност на административните актове" and "Обвързана компетентност и оперативна самостоятелност".

Prof. Kino Lazarov was a member of the commission that drafted the Constitution. In that capacity he was one of the principal advocates for the restoration of the Supreme Administrative Court in the Bulgarian legal system.

Prof. Lazarov took part in the drafting of numerous bills. He is one of the principal authors of the first and second Administrative Procedure Acts (adopted in 1970 and 1979 respectively), in which for the first time in a socialist state the general clause on judicial appeal was introduced, combined with some of the fundamental principles of administrative procedure in France. He was the main initiator and chair of the commission that drafted the currently applicable Administrative Procedure Code.

Prof. Lazarov was a member of three advisory councils on legislation to the National Assembly.

Kino Lazarov was also always a widely read and successful writer of fiction and a satirist. He wrote a number of moving poems into which he put much talent and passion.

He was a holder of the Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius, First Class.