Peter Jambrek (born 14 January 1940)[1] is aSloveniansociologist,jurist,politician and intellectual. He is considered among the fathers of the currentSlovenian Constitution, and the most influentialpublic intellectuals in Slovenia.
He was born inLjubljana, then part ofYugoslavia, and attended high school inMaribor and in Ljubljana. He studied law at theUniversity of Ljubljana, graduating in 1962. In his student years, he was active in student organizations and was among the editors of the student journalTribuna. He obtained his MA in sociology in 1966, and joined theCommunist Party of Slovenia the same year. Between 1968 and 1971, he studied sociology at theUniversity of Chicago, obtaining his PhD in 1971.
In the early 1970s, Jambrek was close to the reformist wing of the Slovenian Communist Party, led byStane Kavčič andErnest Petrič. After the authoritarian turn in theYugoslav Communist Party in 1972-73, which also affected Slovenia, Jambrek withdrew to purely academic work. He obtained professorship at the Faculty of Law and at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana. He studiedconflict theory and published a sociological study on rituals and rebellions. Between 1973 and 1975, he taught at theUniversity of Zambia inLusaka. In 1975, he published a comparative study on the transformation of tribal societies into nation states. Between 1975 and 1982, he published several books analyzing the structure of political decisions in Yugoslav local government.
In the 1980s, Jambrek started collaborating with dissident intellectuals around the journalNova revija. He rose to prominence in 1987, when he published a thorough legal study on the possibilities ofSlovenian secession fromYugoslavia in the collective volumeContributions for a Slovenian National Program.
In 1989, he left the Communist Party and became a founding member of theSlovenian Democratic Union, one of the first democratic non-Communist parties organized during theSlovenian Spring, 1988-1990. After the victory of the anti-CommunistDEMOS coalition in the first Slovenian free elections in spring 1990, he was appointed member of theSlovenian Constitutional Court. In the years 1990-1991, he became one of the foremost members of the Constitutional Committee that wrote the new Slovenian Constitution.
In 1993, he was appointed a member of theEuropean Court for Human Rights inStrasbourg. Between June and November 2000, he served as Minister of the Interior in the short-lived centre right government ofAndrej Bajuk. In 2004, he was among the co-founders of theliberal conservative platformRally for the Republic, and served as its chairman until 2008.
Peter Jambrek was the editor at the European Public Hearing on"Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" organised by Slovenian Presidency of the Council of theEuropean Union (January–June 2008) and theEuropean Commission.[2]
Despite never being its member, he was supportive of theSlovenian Democratic Party until October 2011, when he voiced his sympathy for the newly established liberal centristGregor Virant's Civic List.[3]
At the presidential election in 2022 he voiced his support to Lacanian psychoanalyst and philosopherNina Krajnik. Krajnik stated that Jambrek opened her eyes to presidential candidacy.
Jambrek had a fallout with theSlovenian Democratic Party (SDS) in 2011. After voicing his support for theCivic List, he was accused of being an agent of the Yugoslav secret police,[4] In an interview published byPlanet Siol.net, Jambrek characterized the SDS as a party of "humiliated and insulted class, who never had privileges and who are frustrated because of that"[5][6] He is not involved in politics anymore.[7]
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| Preceded by | Minister of the Interior June 7, 2000–November 30, 2000 | Succeeded by |
