Several Critical Issues in the Development of the Administration of Hungarian Constitutional Justice

Abstract

This essay intends to show the main characteristics of the two phases of the development of Hungarian constitutional justice. The first part examines the operation of the Constitutional Court in the first two periods starting from its foundation. The first period under the chairmanship of Laszlo Solyom may be characterized as having approaching cases from the perspective of natural law, moving away from the statutes of the Constitution then in force (the invisible Constitution), while in the second period, under the chairmanship of constitutional judge Janos Nemeth, decisions were based on the interpretation of the text of the Constitution. The second phase of the Constitutional Court is analyzed by presenting decisions made in taxation cases and in employment and civil service dismissal cases, and it deals in detail with the controversial decision relating to the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (the National Bank of Hungary, hereinafter the MNB).