29 May 2026
Restoring Constitutional Justice in Hungary
On 12 April 2026, Hungarian voters rendered their judgment on the regime that could be described in many ways, but certainly not as a well-functioning liberal democratic constitutional order. Today, the constituent power shall aim at restoring liberal democratic constitutionalism, and more narrowly, constitutional justice. The root of the problem is the current composition of the constitutional court stemming from the winner-takes-all approach of the previous regime. The problematic question, however, is how this can be addressed in line with European constitutionalism. Continue reading >>
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28 May 2026
Fixing the Hungarian Bench
Péter Magyar swept away Fidesz and won a constitutional majority. Yet Orbán packed the courts with his people in the meantime. Should Magyar resort to another round of court-packing? First, legitimate court-packing must have a just cause and must be proportional. Second, the proportionality of such reactive court-packing should in general respect the “paired effect”, although a stronger response may sometimes be justified. Finally, Magyar should not aim just for returning to the status quo but should innovate and build a resilient judiciary that enjoys the trust of the Hungarian people. Continue reading >>
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26 October 2022
Useless and Maybe Unconstitutional
In part III of our analysis of the anti-corruption framework, we will look at another aspect of the Hungarian “reforms”: a new procedure that seems to allow the general public to challenge in court the decisions of Hungarian public prosecutors to drop corruption cases. The new procedure is nearly impossible to use and adds little value to existing controls on the public prosecutor. In addition, the Hungarian Constitutional Court may declare it unconstitutional in any event. Continue reading >>
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01 March 2022
Constitutional Complaint as Orbán’s Tool
The re-regulation of the ex-post review competence and the introduction of the “full” constitutional complaint in 2012 provided a good justification for the Constitutional Court to shift its focus from the control of the legislature dominated by the illiberal Fidesz government to the supervision of the judiciary. However, the justices have not remained simply deferential. They proactively helped to repurpose the constitutional complaint and convert a fundamental rights protection mechanism into a tool reinforcing the government’s interests. Continue reading >>
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15 December 2021
Full Steam Back
On 10 December 2021, almost exactly five years after its infamous Identity Decision, the Hungarian Constitutional Court was expected by the Government to declare the ECJ Judgement C-808/08 to be contrary to Hungary’s constitutional identity. But as a big surprise for many, the Court dodged the conflict and avoided to offer arguments against the supremacy of EU law to the Hungarian Government. Unlike Poland, it has only just prevented a full-blown conflict with the EU. Continue reading >>
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29 June 2021
Oblique Strategies
On June 25, 2021 Hungary’s two top judges – the president of the Constitutional Court, Tamás Sulyok and the chief justice of the Kúria, András Varga Zs. – warned attendants of a conference on the Fundamental Law of an impending constitutional coup. They were addressing the nation’s legal elite – including the speaker of the Parliament, the Minister of Justice and the Prosecutor in Chief – on the premises of the Kúria. The guardians of the Fundamental Law activated the language of militant democracy ahead of the 2022 elections. Continue reading >>
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13 June 2019
„No one has the right to be homeless…”
The Hungarian Constitutional Court's decision on the homelessness ban is not only devastating in terms of outcome, but also in terms of quality of the Court’s reasoning. This poor quality does not stem from the justices’ intellectual inability to adequately address the issues involved in this case, but from unacceptable political considerations spread among the members of the Court. Continue reading >>
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11 June 2019
Human Dignity for Good Hungarians Only
On 4 June 2019 the packed Constitutional Court of Hungary issued an astonishingly inhuman decision: The criminalization and eventual imprisonment of homeless people, the Court declared, is in line with the 2011 Fundamental Law of Hungary. According to the majority, “ (…) nobody has the right to poverty and homelessness, this condition is not part of the right to human dignity.” Continue reading >>01 May 2019
Administrative Judicial Reform in Hungary: Who Gives a Fig about Parliamentary Process?
In the past few months, the Fidesz government has been working on the reform of the administrative judiciary at full speed. The Constitutional Court recently had the opportunity to slow down the process of undermining judicial independence by invalidating the reform legislative act on the basis of procedural irregularities. Even though the law had been adopted as a result of a chaotic parliamentary vote, the justices did not find a violation of the Fundamental Law. The outcome is not surprising, as the Court cannot be accused of exercising a particularly strong control over the parliamentary legislative process in general. What is puzzling, however, is the massive amount of hypocrisy manifested in the reasoning. Continue reading >>
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05 March 2019
Stop Soros Law Left on the Books – The Return of the “Red Tail”?
On 28 February, Hungary's Constitutional Court found the so-called Stop Soros legislative package constitutional. Shocking as it may seem at first glance, this case reminds us how difficult it is to evaluate the judgments of a constitutional court operating in an illiberal political regime. Continue reading >>
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