In the United States of America, the issue of the comprehensibility of legislation and individual decisions has been in the field of decision-making since the 1990s. It was realized that the lack of comprehensibility could cause a serious democracy deficit. The goal of the Plain Language Movement from the beginning is that creator of legal texts shall take into account the addressees' abilities and the easier comprehensibility of legal texts by non-specialists. The study seeks an answer to the question of whether today's Hungarian legislation, governmental law-making, as well as the court, prosecutor's office, official and other law enforcement could use the requirement system of a commonly understandable legal language.
Keywords: law and language, plain language, comprehensibility, legal certainty
Balázs Szabolcs Gerencsér, associate professor, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, gerencser.balazs@jak.ppke.hu.
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A defining prerequisite of legal certainty includes the clarity and unambiguity of legislation - the principle of the clarity of norms. Due to its importance, this principle appeared in the early decisions of the Constitutional Court of Hungary, and over the past 30 years a consistent constitutional case law has crystallized around it. This paper examines the clarity of norms through decisions of the Constitutional Court of Hungary concerning pieces of legislation, which were among the first to explain the subject and can be interpreted simply. First, we unravel the constitutional requirements arising from the clarity of norms and its components: the importance of the norm addressees, furthermore, how the constitutional standard can differ according to groups of addressees, and the legal interpretation as general remediation of violations of the clarity of norms. The paper then focuses on the question of the usage of legal terms and evaluates the constitutionality various legislative drafting techniques, such as the use of exemplificative definition, general terms, and terms across the legal system. Next, we review how regulations can violate the clarity of norms, how this can be remedied by legal interpretation, and also the cases where this method was not efficient, leading to the ruling of the unconstitutionality of the given act or legal provision. By doing so, we also look at some critical aspects of these reasonings. This paper finds that, although the Constitutional Court of Hungary only establishes the violation of the principle of the clarity of norms in exceptional cases, the emerged case law provides a valuable guideline for legislation in order to enforce the clarity of norms more consistently and effectively.
Keywords: Clarity of norms, Legal certainty, Constitutional Court of Hungary, Case law, Legislative drafting
Zsolt Vladár, Senior legislative drafting advisor, The Office of the National Assembly, vladar.zsolt@parlament.hu.
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In today's Hungarian legislation, the issue of laws referred to as "salad laws" is just as relevant as in foreign legal thinking. My research aimed to demonstrate the nature of the phenomenon of omnibus legislation, along with its possible future dangers, existing anomalies and abuses, with the help of foreign and Hungarian empirical data. The thesis discusses both the theory and the established practice. At the beginning of the paper, the concept of omnibus legislation is presented in an international context, followed by a comparison of this legislative method internationally. During this process, I examined the regulations, past and current practices of numerous countries, from which a general conclusion can be drawn that if there is regulation, usually it only applies to financial and budgetary laws. This is followed by the presentation of Hungarian rules and practices, the trend of using this method over the past 32 years, as well as some illustrative examples. At the end of my paper, drawing on international experience but taking into account the peculiarities of Hungarian legislation, I make a de lege ferenda proposal for the consistent implementation of the domestic regulation of "salad laws" based on the principle of the "Single Subject Rule".
Keywords: Omnibus Bills, legislation, "Single Subject Rule", legal certainty, amendment
Bálint Telekesi, law student, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church, telekesi.balint@gmail.com.
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This paper analyzes the issue of popular sovereignty in the light of the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which is incorporated in the 1995 Dayton Peace agreement adopted by the international community to stop the ongoing civil war in the country. After the historical introduction, I examine the Dayton constitutional system in order to indentify the limits of popular sovereignty, with particular regard to the case law of the Constitutional Court of BiH related to the issue of suffrage. The general problems of the Dayton electoral system are most clearly illustrated in the case of the city of Mostar, where no municipal elections were held between 2008 and 2020. The presentation of the legal aspects of the case from a human rights perspective is followed by the formulation of my conclusions and proposals.
By examining the constitutional design of Bosnia-Herzegovina from the point of view of popular sovereignty, I identified the institutional elements that form limitations to popular sovereignty. In addition to legal sovereignty and the separation of powers, the privileged position of international and ethnic elements results in a democratic deficit. Furthermore, the decision-making system - which includes both the characteristics of federalism and consociationalism - significantly reduces the efficiency of the state's operation. The aim of my proposal is to create a balance between popular sovereignty, legal sovereignty and the separation of powers, while respecting the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in order to promote constitutional democracy.
Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, popular sovereignty, Dayton Agreement, constitutional law, peacebuilding
Korponai Ákos, jurist, k-akos@hotmail.com ■
Visszaugrás
