Evgeni Tanchev and the Constitutional Court

Judge Tanchev was a prominent jurist on Bulgaria's Constitutional Court -- a kind of supreme court that decides all serious issues under the Bulgarian Constitution. Thanks to his friendship with Dr. Cole Durham of Brigham Young University (his oldest daughter even graduated from BYU) and other Latter-day Saint leaders, he met with us on 6 November. We discussed the U.S. and Bulgarian Constitutions and the potential growth of friendship between our two nations and faiths. Before we left, he surprised us with a book from his shelf, The Majesty of God's Law. It was written by my own first cousin, W. Cleon Skousen! It had been given to him by a former LDS mission president in Sofia. Judge Tanchev will serve four more years on the Constitutional Court. That court shared the same building with the Council of Ministers and other governmental bodies. When my friend Stuart Waldrip (a Mormon Judge sent to Bulgaria by the U.S. State Dept. in 2011) spent one year helping Bulgaria's judicial system to develop more efficient case management, he also met Judge Tanchev.