Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz

Constitutional Justice under Populism

The Transformation of Constitutional Jurisprudence in Hungary since 2010


Application of the new mandatory interpretation methods

When the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law in 2013 expressis verbis provided for the annulment of all Constitutional Court decisions made before 2012, the Constitutional Court apparently maintained its previous position that it could rely on previous practice. In this case, however, it had to provide reasons for the validity of the reference. This means that although the Constitutional Court has refused, in principle, to build its new constitutional practice without its previous case law, and in particular in the first years following 2012, it referred in a number of cases to its previous case law and confirmed the pre-2012 jurisprudence, it had to develop a justification for this. Thus, despite the appearance of binding interpretative principles or methods in the constitutional text, the change in post-2012 jurisprudence has not been striking in the first years of the new jurisprudence. It was also typical that the Court tended to avoid applying provisions that were still unclear in the Fundamental Law. The first references were made to the achievements of the historical constitution in 20131 but there was no dogmatic clarification of its application, the new set of concepts were being used by the Court rather as a decorative element in its first decisions.2 The Court’s interpretative practice was initially consistent only in the sense, it stated that the constitutionality of a legal rule could not be challenged solely on the basis of the violation of Article R) (3).3 Although the constitutional provision on respect for the achievements of the historic constitution is certainly flexible enough to be used in almost any argument, it is less useful when it comes to providing convincing arguments for a definitive interpretative result.

Constitutional Justice under Populism

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2024

ISBN: 978 963 454 971 0

In Hungary’s 2010 parliamentary elections, Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance and its coalition partner, the Christian Democratic Party won a landslide victory and the newly formed populist Orbán-government gained a two-thirds constitution-making parliamentary majority, which it has kept for four consecutive terms (so far). In the spring of 2011, the National Assembly adopted Hungary’s new Fundamental Law, which has since been amended twelve times. The transformation of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and constitutional jurisprudence has played a significant role in cementing the new regime. The changes can be followed in a chronological order in this book. The author starts with the explanation of the concept of constitutional adjudication, she then reviews the procedural-institutional developments and the critical doctrinal junctures of the past thirteen years with regard to the general assessment of the change in constitutional justice. Finally, the volume offers a reading of how the scholarly experiences and factual results of the thirteen years spent under populism compare to the ideal of constitutional-court-made constitutional justice.

Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz is research professor at the Institute for Legal Studies, HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences and professor of constitutional law at ELTE Law School, Budapest. She worked as law clerk at the Hungarian Constitutional Court in different positions between 2003 and 2013. She has published extensively on different aspects of constitutional law, including the practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, the impact of different contemporary challenges to constitutional adjudication, as well as the rule of law resilience of Hungarian legal system.

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/gardos-orosz-constitutional-justice-under-populism//

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