Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz

Constitutional Justice under Populism

The Transformation of Constitutional Jurisprudence in Hungary since 2010


Conclusions

In this chapter, I have shown that quasi-legal concepts – such as the achievements of the historical constitution or constitutional identity – are easily instrumentalised in the Hungarian populist state, in this case becoming tools of politics, because they have no predetermined legal content; they are not organic in law. This is problematic because, in a democracy governed by the rule of law, constitutional texts must have a recognisable legal meaning and function as legal texts in order to be a limit on public power. The Constitutional Court’s task is to interpret an abstract normative text according to the established methods of constitutional interpretation, but the Constitutional Court also becomes vulnerable if it has to interpret a text with an uncertain legal meaning by unknown methods. Constitutional Court decisions on the achievements of the historical constitution and on constitutional identity have shown that the interpretation of new concepts is in their result uncertain as well. The Constitutional Court is bound only by the Fundamental Law, but if this has no identifiable content, decision-making may become arbitrary. This is also the case with the formulation of the constitutional identity.

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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