Life and career
He was born into Polish–Ukrainian family. His Ukrainian father,as a child,was forcibly displaced from a village near Sanok to north-west Poland in Operation Vistula. [2] In 2000,he graduated in law from the University of Warsaw,and in 2001 he obtained a Master of Law degree in the field of comparative constitutional law from the Central European University in Budapest. [3] He also completed a course in European Law co-organized with Cambridge University as well as American Law co-organized with the University of Florida at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw. [4] In 2006,he received a PhD degree from the University of Warsaw on the basis of his dissertation entitled Multi-level Citizenship in the European Constitutional Sphere. [5] In 2019,he obtained habilitation at his alma mater.
He worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Human Rights of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw as well as academic teacher at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. [6]
In the 1990s he collaborated with the anti-racist "Never Again" Association. [7] [8] Until 2004,he worked at the Weil,Gotshal &Manges law office. He then became a member of the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation (Polish:Helsińska Fundacja Praw Człowieka). In 2008,he served as an expert at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) where he specialized in the observance of human rights in Poland. [4] In 2010,he was appointed deputy director of the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation. He also served as chairman of the Panoptykon Foundation as well as Director of the Zbigniew Hołda Association. [4] He was also a member of the board of directors of the UN Fund for Victims of Torture. In 2011 he was awarded with the Tolerance Prize by the Polish LGBT organizations and in 2013 he received a scholarship within the scope of German Marshall Memorial Fellowship programme. [3]
In 2015,he was appointed as the Polish Ombudsman after receiving endorsement of the Civic Platform,Democratic Left Alliance and Polish People's Party. [4] During his tenure he brought a number of local governments to court for their introduction of the controversial LGBT-free zones, [9] which met with criticism from the ruling conservative Law and Justice party. [10] In 2018,he was awarded the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize for the promotion of the fundamental human rights of intellectual and political freedom. [11]
In 2017-2019 the Civil Rights Ombudsman Adam Bodnar supported the 'Let's Kick Racism Out Of Stadiums' tournament,organized by "Never Again" Association at the Pol'and'Rock Festival (also known as Polish Woodstock),the biggest open-air free music festival in Europe. Bodnar officially inaugurated the tournaments,personally refereed during the games and took part in the matches. He participated in a meeting organised by "Never Again" Association during the festival and spoke about the cases of homophobic violence in Poland. [12] [13] [14]
In 2019,he was awarded the Rule of Law Award conferred by the World Justice Project for his "outstanding efforts in strengthening the rule of law in difficult circumstances". [15] He dedicated the award to Karol Modzelewski. [16] The same year he received the Human Dignity Award from the Roland Berger Foundation;however,he declined the award motivating his decision by the Nazi past of the award founder's father. [17] In September 2020,he was awarded the French Order of Legion of Honour for guarding the civic rights and values in Poland. [18] Bodnar has appeared in leading universities' events including at Yale. [19]
Bodnar's five-year term of office expired in September 2020. [20] The two chambers of the Polish parliament (the Sejm and the Senate) could not agree on a successor. [20] On 15 April 2021,the Constitutional Tribunal issued a ruling that he should stay in office for at most three further months. [21] [22] [20]
In the 2023 parliamentary elections he ran as a Civic Coalition candidate (as part of Senate Pact 2023) for the Senate from the constituency no. 44. He received 628,442 votes and was elected senator. [23] In the same year he was appointed as the minister of justice in the Donald Tusk's cabinet. [24]
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