Lovro Šturm was born on 19 May, 1938 in Ljubljana. After graduating from grammar school in Ljubljana he went on to study at the Faculty of Law at Ljubljana University, taking his degree in 1961. Immediately upon receiving his degree he took up a post as assistant lecturer at the Public Administration Institute of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. In 1963, after completing his studies in Trieste and Strasbourg, he was awarded a diploma by the International Faculty of Comparative Law. In 1966 he was awarded a doctorate in legal sciences for his dissertation The Use of Cybernetics in Public Administration by the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, where in 1971 he began lecturing in administrative law.
Between 1972 and 1985 he headed the Public Administration Institute of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. In 1986 he was elected to the position of tenured professor of administrative law, administrative sciences and legal informatics at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana. Between 1985 and 1990 he was head of the Department of Administrative-legal Sciences, as well as the chairman and member of various boards and committees on academic matters at the Faculty of Law. He was also the President of the Council and Scientific Council of the Pubic Administration Institute. He was also a member of the editorial board of the Public Administration Institute’s gazette and later of the Javna uprava ('Public Administration') magazine. In his long and fruitful career he was a member of the publishing body of the Datenverarbeitung im Recht magazine, and the Italian Informatica e Diritto magazine. In addition to his duties at the Faculty of Law, he also lectured at post-graduate level at the Faculty of Law, as well as at the Faculty of Civic and Geodetic Engineering, the Biotechnical Faculty, the Faculty of Sociology, Political Sciences and Journalism, and on the inter-faculty university level programme on environmental protection.
He has done most of his research at the Public Administration Institute. He has taken part in numerous group research projects, many of which he also headed. Furthermore, he has acted as an expert and consultant on five international research projects with the following research organizations: OECD in Paris (1976-1979), UN, New York (1977-1988) and the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences in Vienna (1984-1987). Since 1998 he has been the Chairman of the Slovene Commission of Jurists, the Slovenian section of the International Commission of Jurists.
Following the first democratic elections in 1990 he was a member of the National Electoral Commission. In 1990 he was elected a member of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia. He was a Constitutional Court judge from 1990 to 1998, being the President of the Constitutional Court in 1997 and 1998. Moreover, he edited the Official Digest of the Constitutional Court Decisions from 1991 to 1998. In 2000 he was a member of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia as Minister of Education and Sport. He has been a member of the Slovenian government as the Minister of Justice since 2005.
He has been on many study visits: to the University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer and the Ministry of Justice of Hessen Province in 1990; the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg; the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in Karlsruhe in 1992; the Bavarian Constitutional Court between 1992 and 1993; the Institute for Politics and Public Law at the University of Munich in 1994; the Constitutional Court of Austria; the Administrative Court and the Faculty of Law in Vienna in 1995; the University of Law in Florence and the Academy of European Law in Florence in 1995; the Constitutional Council and Conceil d'Etat of the French Republic in Paris in 1995. He has published extensively and participated in a number of scientific conferences in Slovenia and abroad including the International Scientific Conference of the Foundation for a Civil Society on decommunisation and democracy in 1993 in Venice; the Symposium of European Constitutional Courts in 1994 in Budapest; the International Conference on the relationship between European Union law and the national law of member States in 1995 in Rome; the international Seminar of the European Commission for Democracy through Law on the protection of fundamental human rights in 1995 in Brioni; the International Symposium on the Rule of Law Concept in 1995 in Graz; the 10th Conference of European Constitutional Courts in 1996 in Budapest.
As an expert in the field of administrative–legal sciences he is the author of twelve books and over two hundred publications and articles published in various periodicals. His scientific research has seen twenty-two group research projects. In addition, he has presented various reports at over thirty international scientific meetings. His most significant scientific contributions examine the operation of administration, constitutional and judiciary protection of human rights, the legal protection of personal data and the legal protection of the environment.
Minister Šturm is married, with one child.
He is fluent in English, German and has a passive knowledge of French, Spanish, Russian, Serbian and Croatian.
