Alexander Dzherov

Alexander Asenov Dzherov was born on 27 June 1929 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He came from an old family with roots in Macedonia, to which General Kliment Dzherov also belonged. His maternal grandfather was the noted jurist Angel Karagyozov, and his brother, Dimitar Dzherov, became a surgeon. He graduated in law from Sofia University in the 1950s.

After graduating, Dzherov practised as a lawyer for more than three decades, mainly in property law. In 1979 he defended a doctoral dissertation before the Higher Attestation Commission on the principle of autonomy of the will in private international law, and in 1995 he was awarded the title of professor.

He was one of the founders of the law department of New Bulgarian University and served as its dean in 1993. He taught civil law, property law and the legal regime of the cadastre and land use, and was the author of more than 50 scholarly publications. His books included Legal Problems of Restitution (1992), Property Law (1993), a two volume Civil Law: General Part (1994 and 1997) and a 2001 work on housing cooperatives and condominium ownership. On 3 April 2001 New Bulgarian University named him an honorary professor for his contribution to its law department.

In 1989 Dzherov joined the revived Radical Democratic Party, then a member of the Union of Democratic Forces, and in 1993 he became its deputy chairman. He left the party leadership in 1995 and in 1996 joined the Democratic Party, serving as its deputy chairman from 2000 to 2006.

He was a member of the Seventh Grand National Assembly, which drafted and adopted the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria in 1991, and chaired its legislative committee, making him one of the main authors of the constitution. He was then elected to the 36th, 37th and 38th National Assemblies. He chaired the legislative committee in the 36th National Assembly and was deputy chairman of the 38th National Assembly.

Alexander Dzherov died on 25 October 2026 at the age of 97. The news was announced on social media by Georgi Markov, a former judge of the Constitutional Court, and was reported the same evening by BGNES, bTV, Dnes.bg and Fakti. The cause of death was not made public.

Dzherov is remembered as one of the fathers of Bulgaria's 1991 constitution, the founding law of the country's democratic transition, and as one of its leading authorities on property law. Through the law department he helped found at New Bulgarian University and his textbooks on civil and property law, he shaped a generation of Bulgarian lawyers.