The amicus brief published in the column was written by eleven Hungarian and an American constitutional scholar as an independent expert opinion for the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, which dealt with the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary. The Commission bases on this and other opinions and a study trip to Hungary published its more than thirty pages long opinion Nr. 720I2013 on 17 July, 2013. This opinion confirms most of the worries expressed in the amicus brief concerning the further backsliding of constitutionalism in Hungary through the Fourth Amendment of the Fundamental Law.
Rui Tavares, Portuguese member of the European Parliament, who drafted the report about the new Hungarian constitutional order after the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law talks to Gábor Halmai about the chances, how the European Union through the new instruments recommended in his report will be able to influence the Hungarian constitutional system.
Kim Lane Scheppele, professor at Princeton University commenting of the report, and analyses the tools of the Union to enforce its joint values enumerated in Article 2 of the Treaty.
Imre Vörös writes about the nature of fundamental rights after the decision of the Constitutional Court, the opinion of the Venice Commission and the resolution of the European Parliament. According to the author the solution of the incoherence within the Constitution could be attempted with separation of the Constitution's norms on the ground, which is qualified as lex generalis and which as lex specialis.
In his commentary, Dániel Deák examines the question of the taxing, which effects hidden expropriation, and so the budgetary, political competence of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and its competence in matters of taxation apropos of the case of N. K. M. v. Hungary.
Emese Szilágyi analyses the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Animal Defenders International v. the United Kingdom. The Court found the prohibition on political advertising on television and radio imposed reconcilable. The author examines the relation between voter equality and freedom of expression according to the arguments raised in the decision.
In this column summaries of some of the recent decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the decision of the US Supreme Court on the case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin are presented. ■
Visszaugrás
