Former Fellows

A political resolution adopted by the Hungarian Parliament in 2020 April declared that the Fundamental Law of Hungary started a new era and terminated the so-called ’post-communist’ period of the country. This earlier period can be labelled as the era of liberal constitutionalism or that of the Rawlsian neutral state or that of ’legal classicism’. The first characteristic of this period was the primacy of the law and the judicalisation of the politics where the judicial bodies – and most importantly the Constitutional Court – played a significant role. Secondly, the mimetics of the ’good practices’ and institutional solutions of the Western legal cultures has to be mentioned. Accordingly, the main source of political legitimacy was thought to be the integration to the West while the main political enemy was an internal one: the former communist heritage was to be overcome. This process was to be done by way of modernising the legal system, based on the rule of law.After 2010, however, the era of legal classicism seems to be followed by a romantic spirit. A new paradigm has risen within the public sphere: the primacy of the politics that aims to constrain the previously dominant judicial actors in the name of popular will. Clear normative traces of the new tendency are the repeal of the former case law of the Constitutional Court and the instrumental usage of law and constitution amendments that lead to the politicization of law. Parallel to these, a strong constitutional identity-based discourse has appeared that aims to protect Hungary as a nation state within the European integration. In addition, this process is surrounded by a significant discourse on the criticism of juristocracy and elitism that seems to be a suitable narrative also for the criticism of the European integration that is in itself a legal construction of the Member States’ elites. Accordingly, European integration gained negative connotations as becoming a new external threat capable of endangering the survival of the nation and its real values, while the main source of political legitimation shifted from the Western liberal model to the revival of the nation and the idea of the historic constitution. Based on these observations, my goal is to study the main legal discourses accompanying this paradigmatic change and its evolution through the series of constitutional amendments.