Renáta Uitz's essay takes a look at the historical considerations of constitutional courts which were aimed at the facilitation of social reconciliation. These often mean facing sins of the past. Past sins can be the violations of mass human rights or injuries dredged up by democratic transition, The judges try to secure the unity of the Constitution not only by means of legal reasoning, but also by historical reasoning, which in most cases leads to controversial results.
László Öllő's essay examines the paragraph of the Hungarian Constitution, which states that the Republic of Hungary senses its responsibility for the fate of Hungarians living outside its borders and shall promote the fostering of their links with Hungary (Article 6.3). In relation to this Öllős takes a look at what the responsibility of the Republic of Hungary means, and what duties of the Republic of Hungary follow from the text of the Constitution with respect to minority Hungarians.
T n his interview Andrew Arato social theorist at the New School of Social Research in New York talks about the situation of human rights and the constitutional crisis in the U.S. He emphasizes that it is a question of the crisis of imperial presidency. On paper, the American political system is a separation of powers system with a relatively weak executive. But since the entry of the United States into world politics, the system has become strongly presidential in moments of crisis, foreign as well as internal, like the Civil War. the World Wars and even the Cold War. As these examples show there is a cyclical relation between the two systems, the paper constitution that involves Congressional dominance or at least recovery and the material, presidential constitution. Interestingly, and fatefully there have been some presidents who have attempted to break or leave the cycle, to assert presidential dominance in an epoch when the external circumstances and the internal stability of the country do not or no longer call for this.
Arato thinks that the imaginary War on Terror and the illegal and counter-productive War in Iraq was the answer the main advisers of President Bush, the vice president and the team in Pentagon preferred to inflict upon the country and the world. They were explainable only as presidential attempts to leave the cycle, and as such, but only as such these efforts totally succeeded. All the attacks on civil liberties, due process, Geneva Conventions and so on strengthening the hands of the president; the long quiescence of the press and the opposition party now fortunately over, the surrender by Congress of its control function that may still continue, all this would have been impossible without the magnification, and by now exacerbation of small and manageable crises into Orwellian cataclysmic challenges.
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Four experts evaluate on the need to reform the election system, and its possibilities. According to Márta Dezső the correction of the election system is needed partly because of imperfect and lacking regulations. This includes the election campaign together with questions of the media and campaign financing. This latter, as the author emphasises, is not separable from the problematic of party financing. In Zoltán Szente's opinion some of the most important problems are the disproportionality of the election system, pushing the party structure towards a two-party, or at least a bipolar system; its complicated nature and its effect which facilitates the development of a relatively closed political elite. In this way the expectations that the proportional system would be the maximalization of the benefits of the two main election systems withour its disadvantages, did nor wholly come true. According to Szente this can be because the emphasis could not be settled either on securing a majority that is able to govern, or on proportionality. After a thorough examination of the experience of elections since 1991 and drafting several suggestions, György Szoboszlai's writing closes with the remark that if nothing happens that would concern the system, or if only technical corrections take place, the constitutional framework will not suffer any loss, as there is no urgent need of a thorough legislation. On the contrary, adds Szoboszlai, the ideal of institutional stability is beginning to be highly esteemed within our state system that is suffering constant, frantic structural changes. György Wiener is of the opinion that due to the inclination to a great disproportionality, unpredictability and complicated nature, the election system developed in 1989 cannot be considered as working well. It may have been justified at the beginning to give key importance to effectiveness among all other criteria, however, several years later it is more and more clear that diverting the rate of votes and mandates in itself does not ensure the possibility to govern, and perceptively confronts the manifestation of electoral will.
The essay by Eötvös Károly Institution on party and campaign financing first examines the most important principles behind party financing, then reviews the most important elements of working systems of party financing. In the light of all this the authors draft several suggestions the manifestation of which would mean the overall reform of the Hungarian system of party financing. Finally the authors briefly evaluate the government's recent bill on the reform of party financing.
We present the petition of Zoltán Lomnici, Supreme Court Chief Justice asking for the interpretation of Article 61.1 of the Constitution. Zoltán Fleck comments on this petition. He is looking for an answer to the question, whether the petition of the Supreme Court Chief Justice can be taken seriously, if the Chief Justice questions certain elements of the interpretation by the judiciary with the clear aim of restricting freedom, or else gratifies the requests of minority civil organisations while serving this intent. Fleck's final conclusion is that any intent aimed at the restriction of freedom has to be taken seriously.
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Decision no. 22/2005 of the Constitutional Court interpreted the notion of equal suffrage. In this decision the following levels of equal suffrage were distinguished: 1) equal voting rights; 2) equal voting power; 3) equal voting power from the point of view of the real weight of votes. Benedek Varsányi's writing analyses the question what requirements the Constitutional Court attached to the individual levels of equal suffrage, what approach lay in the background, and how strictly these requirements have to be manifested in the election system.
Gábor Halmai's. writing attempts to evaluate the procedural experience of the parliamentary elections of 2006, in the light of the statements of the National Election Council and above all, of the decisions of the National Election Council annulled by the Supreme Court. In Halmai's opinion the interpretation of the law of the National Election Council and the Supreme Court in direct opposition with each other result in an uncertainty of jurisdiction which violates the constitutionaI requirement of legal certainty.
We are presenting the recent decisions of the US Supreme Court on gerrymandering and campaign financing, a report from the United Nations Human Rights Committee urging the US to restore voting rights to citizens who have served their sentences or who are released on parole, a selection of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, together with the recent resolutions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court,
The leaders of the association Óvás!, struggling against the demolition of houses in the Jewish quarter of Budapest give a presentation of the legal debates they have had with the concerned self-governments, criticizing the irresponsible destruction of values. The writing tries Co answer the questions whether the protection of the cultural heritage of the Jewish quarter can be facilitated by legal measures, whether unlawful steps can be stopped, and whether a public debate can be forced out in the possession of all public information, to decide the most appropriate way of renewing the quarter.
Here we recommend four books to our readers. Tamás Győrfi's book on contemporary legal positivism, Zoltán Szente's book European History of Constitution and Parliamentarism, a volume of essays The Hungarian Status Law. Nation Budding and/or Minority Protection, and a university textbook on fundamental rights. ■
Visszaugrás
