Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz

Constitutional Justice under Populism

The Transformation of Constitutional Jurisprudence in Hungary since 2010


The experience of competences

The procedure of the Constitutional Court is essentially subject to a motion.1 Even under the previous legislation, the Court could only act ex officio in a very narrow range of cases, and it developed the doctrine of the so-called “close relation” itself to determine the cases in which it could turn to the examination of a legal provision not mentioned in the petition. Nevertheless, the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law adopted on 25 March 2013 has narrowed the scope of the Constitutional Court’s discretion in this matter by emphasising in detail the elements of the requirement to submit a valid petition and the strictly connected scope of the constitutional review. The rule expressly stated that “Those provisions of a legislative act that were not requested to be reviewed may be reviewed and annulled by the Constitutional Court only if there is a close substantive connection between them and the provisions requested to be reviewed.” Thus, the Constitutional Court is now not only bound by its own practice in this issue, which obviously gives it greater discretion, but is also bound by this specific legislation not to be able to widen its competence in this regard. The role and responsibility of the petitioner is therefore more pronounced in determining what will be subject to constitutional review in Hungary, however it is not necessary to submit the motion by an advocate or other legal representative. In the following, I will therefore not only present the substantive outcome of the Constitutional Court proceedings, but also assessing the input side as well, assess the number of petitions.

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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