In memoriam

On 21 August 2024, our dear and highly esteemed colleague, Assistant Professor PD Eva Synek, passed away after a long illness.

Eva Synek enjoyed a worldwide reputation, especially in the field of Orthodox Canon Law. Her academic interests were, however, broader in their scope and made her into an accomplished contributor to the field of women’s rights. She was a leading member of numerous academic societies. She co-founded the Austrian Society for Religious Studies and served on its board. For twelve years, she held the position of the Secretary General of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches, and continued to serve on its board for a long time after she had stepped down from this position. Over many years, she became a driving force in the development of the society, not least as regards the publication of its yearbook ‘Kanon‘. In 2000, Eva Synek completed her habilitation at the University of Eichstätt with the work ‘Οἶκος. Zum Ehe- und Familienrecht der Apostolischen Konstitutionen’ [The house: On the marital and family law of the apostolic constitutions]. As a highly active academic, she published numerous articles and books and served on the editorial board of several scholarly journals. In 2013/14, she was a visiting professor of Orthodox Canon Law in Leuven, and until her passing she taught this subject with great dedication at the Faculty of Law of the University of Vienna.

Her premature death is an immense professional and personal loss. We will fondly remember our dear colleague and the numerous stimulating conversations with her.

Obituary Notice

Legal philosophy has a long tradition in Vienna, dating back to the days of the natural law theorists Karl Anton von Martini (1726–1800) and Franz von Zeiller (1751–1828). During the first half of the twentieth century, Viennese legal philosophy earned itself international acclaim when Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) and his collaborators developed a pronounced and much debated version of legal positivism, the so-called Pure Theory of Law. Owing to the initiative of Gerhard Luf, whose works have contributed considerably to the rehabilitation of practical reason in legal philosophy, the discipline became established as a separate Department in 1985. 

In 2005, the Department of Legal Philosophy was merged with the Department of Law and Religion. It dated back to the founding of the Vienna law faculty and was home to many eminent scholars, such as Paul Joseph von Riegger (1705–1775), a defender of religious toleration, and Max Hussarek von Heinlein (1865–1936), a leading theorist of the legal relation between the state and religious communities. Under the stewardship of Richard Potz, the discipline was expanded into the comprehensive study of law and religion. 

This fused unit has been given its current name in 2016.

Part of the interdisciplinary research of this faculty is the research unit "Hans Kelsen and his Circle", headed by Prof. Jabloner.

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