Journal Number: 7
Students have become increasingly interested in penitentiary and probation law, which has led to the creation of a Georgian textbook, Probation Law. A co-author of the textbook noted that the popularity of the previous publication, Penitentiary Law released in 2014, written by Moris Shalikashvili, Givi Mikanadze, and Maia Khasia, led to the idea of the new textbook. Penitentiary Law is very popular in academic circles, and with practicing lawyers and students. Importantly, several other Georgian universities have included this textbook in their academic syllabi. The authors of the new book are Moris Shalikashvili as well as Giorgi Arsoshvili, Head of the National Probation Agency, and Givi Mikanadze, Associate Professor at the University of East European Studies and Project Manager of the European Council Department of Criminal Law. They carried out research on probation law in 2014-2015 and published the textbook in 2015.
In 2014, the Open Society-Georgia Foundation sponsored a project entitled Liberalizing Trends in Georgian Criminal Law organized at the initiative of a group of TSU Law Faculty Professors. As TSU law professors clarify, the incentive to undertake such a project was to address the tendencies prevailing in Georgian legislation since 2004. The authoritarian influence on Georgian legislators was reflected by a number of changes, for example more acts were criminalized; the composition of already existing crimes were expanded; penalties were changed in such a way that the judge was not entitled to pass individualized punishments; and issuing fines, as additional punishments, became unfairly common. Furthermore, the principle of absorption while having the case of several crimes was changed into the rule of accumulating crimes.
The Vardzia monastery complex is located in the extreme southwest of Georgia on the left bank of the Mtkvari River near the Turkish-Georgian border. It is 1300 m above sea level and belongs to the Aspindza Municipality of the Meskheti Region. The monastery dates to the 12th-13th centuries (1156-1203). Since 2007, by nomination of the Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia, the monument is on the provisional list for inclusion in UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Today this cultural heritage monument faces serious threats however.
Few people may know that since its foundation in 1918, the first Georgian university has had relations with leading European universities. Just a year after its foundation, two brothers – Ivane and Alexander Nikuradze – left for Germany to take up their studies at the University of Göttingen, which was known for its institutes of mathematics and physics. Ivane Nikuradze soon became the founder of modern hydrodynamics and aerodynamics; as a distinguished student of Professor Ludwig Prandtl, he successfully defended his PhD thesis on “Observations on Speed Distribution in Turbulent Flows”. He and his doctoral advisor participated in the establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, today known as the Max Planck Institute.