Jiri Mucha was born in Hradec Kralove on 11 May 1946. He has two adult children.
       He completed his law studies at the Faculty of Law at Charles University in Prague in 1969. In the same year he passed his doctorate examination there and was awarded his doctorate of law in the field of international law. During his studies he also attended two study programmes in the field of comparative law at the International Faculty for the Study of Comparative Law in Montreal and Strasbourg.
      Following two years of legal training, he worked as an attorney from 1973 to 1993 in Prague, where he was concerned, first and foremost, with international law and representation in civil cases with an international element.
       In October 1993 he was elected Member of the European Commission of Human Rights at the Council of Europe in Strasburg by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, where he worked for the next five years until 1998, and where he was concerned with the application of the European Convention on Human Rights within the framework of rulings on charges of violations of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the convention, submitted by individuals and organisations against member states of the Council of Europe.
      In June 1998 he entered the diplomatic service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and acted until November 2002 in Strasbourg as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the Council of Europe. In 2001 and 2002 he held the post of Chairman of the Group of Rapporteurs for Legal Co-operation at the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, and contributed to the adoption of a number of international conventions of the Council of Europe. On 28 January 2003 he was appointed Judge at the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic by President Václav Havel.
      He has passed state language examinations in English and German, and also speaks French. He has participiated in seminars on American law in Amsterdam and Salzburg. He has taken part in conferences and seminars on the international and European protection of human rights both in this country and abroad, and has lectured and published articles on this topic at home and abroad. He sits on the boards of editors of several law reviews.