Lacking rule of law in the lawyers’ regime: hungary

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article argues that the current problems regarding the rule of law under the Fidesz-regime (2010–2018) are due to continuities of legal thought of the 19th century. The Western liberal conception of the rule of law has little ground to become rooted in Hungary because of the country’s incompatible legal and political traditions, lack of intellectual receptiveness to host the idea and weak institutions to anchor it. The analysis focuses on five angles that affect the Hungarian perception of the rule of law: (1) the traditional conceptual understanding of the rule of law and statecraft; (2) the special trust in lawyers and the legal profession; (3) the relevance of the way the system changed in 1989–1990 in terms of democratisation and legislative culture; (4) the constitutional change carried out by the Fidesz administration in 2010–2014 and (5) a new era of nationalism, as the second phase of the Fidesz-revolution, which can be regarded as a declaration of paradigm-change in the conception of democracy. The overproduction of laws was the means of authoritarian development, thus, technically the core problem of democracy is the ‘rule of law’.