Dr. Peter Čeferin graduated from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana in 1960. He was awarded a Master’s degree in 1986 and acquired a Doctorate in 1988. The title of his doctoral thesis was Odvetnik, njegova neodvisnost nekoč in danes, posebej v Sloveniji (The Lawyer, his Independence in the Past and Present, Particularly in Slovenia).
Peter Čeferin started his legal profession in 1967; in 1993 he founded Čeferin Law Firm with his sons Rok and Alexander Čeferin, within which he still practises as attorney. In his work, he mainly deals with criminal law, constitutional law, and law on personal (human) rights.
He communicates in the following foreign languages: Croatian, Serbian, and German.
Dr. Peter Čeferin is the author of a number of professional articles in the field of law. He is the author of professional and scientific monographs Neodvisnost odvetnika (The Independence of the Attorney) (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, 1988), Odvetniška zbornica Slovenije – odlomki iz zgodovine (Bar Association of Slovenia – excerpts from history) (Bar Association of Slovenia, 2006) and Odvetništvo na Slovenskem: Od habsburške monarhije do neodvisne države (The Barrister’s Profession in Slovenia: From the Habsburg Monarchy to the Independent State) (Litera 2016). He is also the author of a number of literary works, collections of short stories that focus largely on his career work as an attorney: Moje odvetniško življenje (My Life as an Attorney) (Cankarjeva založba, 2012), Valat (Euchre) (Litera, 2013), Moje zgodbe (My Stories) (Litera 2014) and 100 sodnijskih (100 from the Court) (Litera 2015).
In the period before Slovenia’s independence, Čeferin was a member of the Council for the Protection of Human Rights. At that time he initiated a change to the existing Police Act, according to which suspects acquired the right to the assistance of an attorney upon first contact with the police and not only when the prosecution process had begun, which had been the case up until then.
He was Vice President of the Bar Association of Slovenia from 1985 to 1989. From 1991 to 1995 he was a member of the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia.
In 2014, the Bar Association of Slovenia awarded Dr. Peter Čeferin the highest recognition for his life work as an attorney, the Danilo Majaron Medal for his outstanding achievements in the development of the attorney’s profession, as “through his long-term work and life, he has implemented legal values and cultivated the noble tradition of advocacy”. In January 2018 he won a case brought before the European Court of Human Rights, Čeferin vs Slovenia (App. 40975/08), where the court ruled that Slovenia had violated his freedom of speech when it fined him for his critical statements directed at the court and court experts.
