Josef FialaProf. JUDr. Josef Fiala, CSc. was born in Velke Mezir? ici near Brno, Czech Republic, in 1953, and graduated from Faculty of Law, J. E. Purkyne? University (now Masaryk University), Brno, in 1979, becoming a full-time lecturer in the same yea and subsequently an associate professor (docent) in 1995. Since 2005 he has been a professor, and since 2003 he has also been lecturing at Palacky University, Olomouc. In addition to lecturing, research, and publication activities (as author or co-author he has published over thirty books and about 200 articles and papers in journals and specialized publications), he has been engaged in a number of other activities related to legal practice. In 1992 he was an assistant to a Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Czechoslovak Federative Republic; since 1995 he has been an assistant to a Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic; in 1998-2002 he was a member of the civil law committee of the Legislative Board of the Government of the Czech Republic, and he is also a member of the Civil Code Re-codification Committee of the Ministry of Justice. His dissertation on easement in 1984 brought him the degree of Candidate of Sciences (then an equivalent to Ph.D.), and in 1995 he gained a higher doctorate (docent) with the work 'Ownership of Flats in the Czech Republic'. Currently, he is the head of the Civil Law Department of the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, in Brno. Read More Read Less