In his essay, Lech Garlicki contrasts the mutual position of constitutional courts and that of supreme courts in several continental legal orders operating in the Kelsenian model of constitutional review, including old and new democracies. He discusses the tensions inherent in delineating the competences of the two courts, and the potential conflicts arising out of the strongly judge-made character of constitutional law, a phenomenon often unwelcome by ordinary courts. He finds that tensions between the two courts are endemic, and concludes that despite the strong tendency of constitutional courts for 'positive lawmaking' they are still weaker than the supreme court mainly for reasons of the lack of 'real' constitutional complaint.
Gábor Gadó, who was responsible for the codification of the new Hungarian Civil Code in the Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement, reviews the academic debates and the legislative procedure that led to the enactment of the new Civil Code. In his essay he mainly concentrates on three major civil law and constitutional issues: the right to self-determination (in the sense of legal capacity of persons), contractual freedom, and non-discrimination. Gadó emphasizes that the main purpose of the codificators and legislators was to enact a Civil Code that does not hide behind the doctrine of value neutrality, but that serves as a firm yardstick for judges and lawyers in interpreting the new Civil Code in harmony with fundamental rights.
In this issue we publish two interviews. In the first one made by Gábor Halmai and Oroslya Salát with Péter Paczolay, the President of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, the chief justice talks both about the past and the future of judicial review in Hungary, including the introduction of a German type real constitutional compliant. Árpád Pataki, well-known judge of the Metropolitan Court in an interview by András Hanák articulates an ordinary judge's opinion about this idea.
Is there a need to amend the rules on the Constitutional Court after twenty years? To what extent can the Constitutional Court, by exercising its exceptionally broad powers, secure the protection of fundamental rights? Often it seems that some constitutional issues - e.g. indirect discrimination - remain unresolved because of the abstractness of the Court's competences. At the same time, the lack of 'real' constitutional complaint hinders the Constitutional Court to exercise constitutional control over ordinary courts.
Can it be expected that after the new Civil Code will have entered into force, fundamental rights jurisprudence of ordinary courts will become stronger, and this alone would justify to introduce a new competence
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over real constitutional complaint before the Constitutional Court? Or, the Court being the ultimate interpreter of constitutional matters alone justifies the introduction of real constitutional complaint? These questions are tackled in this forum by András Bragyova, Zsolt Balogh, József Petrétei, Péter Tilk, János Cserni and Bernadette Somody.
We present summaries of the latest decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, and of the Hungarian Constitutional Court.
Here we present reviews of the recently publish Commentary to the Hungarian Constitution. After Péter Sólyom's introductory review essay, Nóra Chronowski and Tímea Drinóczi analyses a few chapters of the commentary.
The editors introduce two books in this issue: the edited version of reports of the conference on '20 years of republican constitution', and an essay volume entitled Lejtős pálya. Antidiszkrimináció és esélyegyenlőség (Slanting field. Antidiscrimination and equality of chances). In addition, we present two recently launched legal journals. ■
Visszaugrás
