Hungarian Constitution Research Articles

The underpinning of the protection of fundamental rights provided by the Hungarian Constitution: Article 8 paragraph (1)

The study analyses the protection of fundamental rights in Hungary. Article 8 paragraph (1) of the Hungarian Constitution is the basis of the protection of fundamental rights. The paper shows how Art. 8 paragraph (1) elvolved and explains how the Constitutional Court formed its content during the almost two decades after the transition. The content of the rule is explained by way of an item-by-item analysis of the terms of this paragraph. The analysis shows that the fact that the protection of fundamental rights is a primary obligation is not merely a declaration, but a regulative principle of constitutional democracy.

The Hungarian Diætalis Tractatus and the Imperial Constitutional Systems: A Comparison

The individual characteristics of the Hungarian constitution are better revealed by comparison with the constitutions of its own region than by comparison with those of the countries of western Europe. A convenient way to explore the topic of how the diætalis tractatus (bargaining between the Crown and the Hungarian parliament) constrained autocratic power is to contrast it with the position of parliaments in Berlin and Vienna. As in the German and Austrian constitutional systems, in Hungary the powers of the Crown were immense. In contrast, the arbitrary power of the executive in Hungary was mitigated far less by the institutions of the Rechtsstaat than by the strong position of the Hungarian parliament. However, the clashes between the monarch and the Hungarian parliament were not fought with modern constitutional devices such as impeachment of ministers or deputations. Instead, they were conducted using the hoary institutions of the past, such as the resistance (vis inertiæ) of the counties, the exchanges of address and rescript between the two sides, obstrukció in parliament by minorities, repeated prorogations by the king, and the appointment of royal commissars with powers of coercion.

Constitutional rights: Horizontal effect and antidiscrimination law in Hungary

This contribution aims to examine how the Hungarian Constitution applies in private relations through judicial activity and how the anti-discrimination legislation influences this tendency. The current codification procedure of the new civil code calls for a thorough theoretical background in order to answer how its provisions relate to the Constitution. After the general overview of the practice of courts and the Constitutional Court, the criticism of scholars developed on the issue will shed light on the weaknesses, but in spite of them, the overall success of the theory of indirect horizontal effect. The paper will also deal with the horizontal effect of a specific constitutional right, namely the right to equal treatment. I examine the fairly new legal instrument, the act on the prohibition of certain forms of discrimination, and demonstrate how this new practice influences the idea of horizontal effect in constitutional law and what implications it has on the new Civil Code afoot. I argue that the act at first sight exists independently from the requirement of horizontal application of fundamental rights, but, in fact, it implicates the necessity to reconsider in its light how the Constitution applies in private relations.

The likely effects of the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe (TCE) on the Hungarian legal order

The study analyses the potential effects of the Treaty on the Hungarian Constitution and its application by the Hungarian Constitutional Court, and the more general-and at the European Law’s present stage of the development unavoidable-problem of the theoretical analysis of European Law as a branch of law.The study points out that the Hungarian Constitution’s Accession Clause (Article 2/A) has not solved the problem of the primacy of Community Law, as far as the relationship between EU Law and the Hungarian Constitution is concerned, therefore the Constitutional Court encounters a problem that is increasingly difficult to resolve, when facing issues relating to the incompatibility of Hungarian statutes with EU Law. The study criticises some solutions proposed by the Constitutional Treaty (e.g. the institution of “recommendations”-(the present practice of “guidelines” etc.) which is definitely unconstitutional according to the Hungarian Constitution and its application practice by the Constitutional Court. Finally the study complements the problems thus outlined with the fact that the concept of EU Law and its various parts have not been clarified from a dogmatic perspective-the time has come to systematize this enormous material of law, especially when a Constitutional Treaty makes the attempt to summarize the legal fundaments of the unprecedented effort to develop an economic and political integration in Europe.

The EU’s constitutional treaty-its development, structure and containt

The study analyses two questions: the necessity of a European Constitution, and the basic content of the European Constitutional Treaty (with the aim to analyse in a separate study the potential effects of the Treaty on the Hungarian Constitution and its application by the Hungarian Constitutional Court).

Hungarian Roma Attitudes on Minority Rights: The Symbolic Violence of Ethnic Identification

Since 1989 Hungary has undergone profound political and economic changes. The political changes are referred to as ‘democratisation’, a term describing a general shift from an authoritarian to a pl...

The Legal Doctrine and Legal Policy Aspects of the EU-Accession

The author deals with an important question of the Hungarian constitutional law, which plays a relevant role during the accession process of a state of the European Union (EU). It means that the question of legal haromization always arises, when a state is going to join the EU. The author focuses on the question, whether the international law-namely the law of the EU-or the national law should be privileged in given cases. The author introduces the possible conflicts between international law and domestic law with the help of several examples. He refers to the numerous solutions of member-states of the EU and also mentions the situation of some would-be member-states, too. The author highlights the point of view that the Community law precedes the constitutions of the member-states. As a result of this the Hungarian constitution has to be modified in order to meet the requirements of the legal harmonization process, which will emerge with the access of Hungary to the EU.

Lajos Kossuth and the Conversion of the Hungarian Constitution

The ancient constitution of Hungary consisted of the mutually recognised rights and obligations of two actors: the Crown and the nobility. The reformers aimed at creating a Hungarian civil society through legislation. Conversion meant the replacement of the constitution, based on rights, by another system, based on statute laws. The April Laws broke the back of the old social order based on hereditary right and laid the foundation of the new Hungary.

Public-Private Opposition and Biopolitics: A Response to Judit Sándor

PIERRE Bourdieu has constantly taught us something like this: “If you meet a dichotomy when thinking, be brave: try to escape!” I will do so. I cannot see any clear intellectual distinction between public and private, just as I cannot see any clearer intellectual distinction between body and soul. A good metaphor for the continuity between public and private is the corridor between the private flat and the public entrance to our hotel. This corridor is neither private nor public; it is obviously only more private or public than something else. And some shadows in the corridor might allow us more privacy than elsewhere in any so-called private space. Better, thus, than a continuity, we have here a tension between two ideal-types: the so-called private and public. I would like to show that real shadows between two ideals are sometimes more interesting than false light provided by forced oppositions. The problem with ideal-types is that they are “types” and “ideals.” “Types,” which means that they allow a great part of the complexity of reality to escape; “ideals,” which means that values are attached to them: we move, then, in the world of connotations , not of denotations. SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring 2002) Public-Private Opposition and Biopolitics: A Response to Judit Sándor* BY DOMINIQUE MEMMI This text is a transcription of my oral response in English to Judit Sándor’s paper. I apologize for the quality of the text and the brevity of the comment. Despite its false clarity, however, this “opposition” is deeply rooted in our anthropological and psychological experiences: that is precisely why we use it so often, even when it has no clear sense. We have a tendency to think there is a clear difference between “hate” and “love”—despite a century of psychoanalytic knowledge and practice—because we feel them as antinomies. Similarly, the public-private distinction would be one of the expériences premières (first experiments) we need to discard if we want to start thinking seriously, as Gaston Bachelard teaches us in the first chapter of La Formation de l’esprit scientifique (1960). * So, how can we manage, when meeting this dichotomy, without escaping our task? The only valid intellectual solution, it seems, is to wonder what people mean by these terms, here and there. What do we mean at any given moment that helps us to think we speak the same language, for example, the here and now of the conference in Budapest at which these papers were presented? What did Judit Sándor mean by using the term “privacy” while working on reproduction? Privacy in her paper often implicitly refers to women’s liberty to act as they want about their reproductive functions. No such “privacy ” is guaranteed as such in any country, she then discovers. But “privacy” can also allude, in her paper, to the right to oppose oneself to the use of one’s body by others. Then, we discover with Judit Sándor, that there are some differences between Hungary and others nations in Europe, for example France. The Hungarian constitution recognizes the protection of personal data, personal reputation, sanctity of the home, and private secrets. But the only allusion to “privacy” in the matter of health would be the “right to exercise” for a doctor. She thus finds nothing like an absolute protection of the body in the matter of reproduction. In France, on the contrary, there is now a law, 144 SOCIAL RESEARCH since 1994, that, making clear allusion to biomedicine in general and reproduction in particular, has assumed the proclamation of the inviolabilité (inviolability) and incessibilité (inalienability) of the human body. Here we find something like a privacy against the doctors, the biologists, the other patients in search of fresh organs or reproductive materials. But again, when implicitly Judit Sándor means by “privacy” or “liberty” a woman’s right to do what she wants to her body against any public intervention, such privacy has nowhere, to my knowledge, been assessed. In France, abortion, contraception, sterilization for contraceptive purposes must be treated the same way: they are not mentioned as rights, but as mere social possibilities, and...

A Republic with a Royal Crown - The Historical Development of the Holy Crown Concept in the Hungarian Constitution

The idea of a Royal Crown personifying a state which is a Republic is an intriguing one. That is the situation of the Republic of Hungary. In this article, Professor Szakats traces the origins of the idea from the early days of Hungary through to its confirmation in 1989. The article also explores the nature and constitutional implications of the Crown as a legal person.

Réforme constitutionnelle et administrative en Hongrie

Constitutional and administrative reform in Hungary. The particular nature of the political changes in Hungary might be described as the way in which the various stages of evolution of the political regime have almost imperceptibly merged into each other. So much so that certain observers are still in doubt about the precise dating of the change. The Hungarian constitution evolved through a succession of changes. However, the latest of these, which took place on 23rd October, 1989, and the elections of Spring 1990 which followed, mark a key date in the evolution of the political system. This new régime, whose characteristics are studied by the present author, was reluctant to invest the President of the Republic with over-dominant powers, and decided to give the Prime Minister a key role m the Republic, like the German chancellor. Will the 1994 elections result in a sufficiently large majority to start a move for the adoption of a new Constitution ? Past experience shows that, were this not to happen, repercussions on the political and constitutional front would not be too serious.

Die Konzeption einer neuen ungarischen Verfassung / The Concept of a New Hungarian Constitution

Article Die Konzeption einer neuen ungarischen Verfassung / The Concept of a New Hungarian Constitution was published on July 1, 1989 in the journal Comparative Southeast European Studies (volume 38, issue 7-8).

Stará Ústava Ceská a Uherská. (The Old Czech and Hungarian Constitution)

Stará Ústava Ceská a Uherská. (The Old Czech and Hungarian Constitution)