In 2024, a series of national academic conferences on "Codification and Enactment" was launched to present the activities of the working group set up by the Ministry of Justice to summarise the experience of civil judges and to analyze the comments and suggestions received from the legal community. The conference, held in June 2025 at the University of Miskolc, dealt with legislative and enforcement issues related to the sixth book of the Hungarian Civil Code. The present paper is an edited and expanded version of the plenary presentation given at this event.
A 2024-ben "Kodifikáció és hatályosulás" címen országos tudományos konferenciasorozat indult, amelynek célja az Igazságügyi Minisztérium által a polgári bírák tapasztalatainak összegzésére és a jogásztársadalomtól kapott észrevételek és javaslatok feldolgozására létrehozott munkacsoport tevékenységének bemutatása volt. A rendezvénysorozat 2025 júniusában a Miskolci Egyetemen megrendezett ülése a magyar Polgári Törvénykönyv hatodik könyvével kapcsolatos jogalkotási és jogalkalmazási kérdésekkel foglalkozott. A jelen tanulmány a konferencián elhangzott plenáris előadás szerkesztett és bővített változata.
"A growing body of literature proclaims that law is the organiser of social life. [...] There is no science that can survive without practical relevance, and in this respect the only difference lies in the degree of immediacy with which theoretical findings are utilised in practical life through various channels of transmission. The value and raison d'être of all philosophy is given by the threads that connect it to practical life. [...] Practical life is the Anteusa of all sciences.[1]
We could not find a more suitable opening thought than this statement by Beck Salamon, which the author placed at the beginning of his study entitled Kötelemvalósulás (The Realisation of Obligations). He also wrote that "legislation is the reading material of researchers in the volumes of the law books - legislation gains real existence through practical application. Legislation is applied in practice in specific cases, when it comes into play as a living legal command in the affairs of two interested parties. It is through these individual cases that the idea of legislation, which in its generality has faded into abstraction, becomes a real factor in life."[2]
Civil law is the law of everyday life. To use Radbruch's often-quoted expression, private law is "the heart of all rights", and contract law, to continue the metaphor, represents the beating heart of this engine of the legal system. It hardly needs to be said that the functioning of this mechanism - despite being designed to be fundamentally self-propelled, or, so to speak, trained to be independent - requires constant supervision. Legislation that has entered into force requires some follow-up, even if the legislation has been successful and the norm has been incorporated into the legal system. This is particularly true for rules designed to be dynamic. The title of the presentation on which this study is based, ‚Codification and entry into force of the Civil Code - the Civil Code in practice', also refers to this. In Act CXXX of 2010 on Legislation, the legislator itself stipulated that legislation requires attention even after its creation; in other words, legal norms and, of course, the application of the law cannot be left to their own devices. In essence, post-review plays the same role in codification as it does in construction contracts: it involves the subsequent verification of the viability of the created work in order to increase its lifespan and ensure its usability (efficiency). This is also a kind of "warranty obligation".
This is particularly important in the case of rules intended for movement and relocation. The rules of contract law represent the dynamics of property law. Vilmos König put it this way: "Contract law is what appears as a guiding and regulating element in every moment of alert life, so that every activity sets one of the keys of this body of law in motion. Despite its immeasurable importance, it is fraught with difficult problems. There is a great danger that, in the face of the constant fluctuations, developments and excesses of economic life, established legal principles lose their vitality. It is of key importance for the codification of contract law to be limited to principles that retain their guiding force in all circumstances. But these must then be laid on crystal-clear, solid foundations."[3] We fully agree with the position of Zoltán Novotni, who pointed out that the establishment of stable legal institutions in civil law is particularly important because it provides legal entities with economic leeway, establishes standard business rules and builds a system for restoring any disrupted economic balance of interests, as well as the methods and tools for this restoration and redress.[4]
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A significant proportion of the comments received by the working group summarising the experiences of civil jurisdiction in relation to the Book of Obligations came from the courts (OBH), the bar (MÜK) and the notary profession (MOKK). This is no coincidence. When lawyers talk about legal practice, in many cases they mean the application of the law as embodied in court judgments: when we look for "legal practice", we immediately think of a collection of court decisions. However, we know that the living reality of the law does not begin with a judgment.[5] In the case of contract law in particular, the law is enforced in a more modest form: obedience to the norm and voluntary compliance with the law constitute the overwhelming majority. In other words, the application of law without coercion, compulsion, intervention, etc. This is roughly what Gusztáv Szászy-Schwarz said about the effect of legislation, that the legislator's command is only law if the public actually feels that it must be obeyed.[6] To quote a saying attributed to the Marquis de Talleyrand, "You can do many things with bayonets, except sit on them..." Obedience born of coercion is not lasting. Obedience to norms that arises from within, without coercion, is essential for balanced functioning.
Today, it is no longer just three people who hold the law in their hands (referring to Gusztáv Szászy-Schwarz's well-known statement). On the contrary, the number of "law holders" who apply the law has increased dramatically. And here we are not referring to the natural and legal persons who apply the law, but rather to the fact that the circle of law enforcers has become very heterogeneous. To give just one example, most legal disputes concerning warranty claims do not even reach the court stage, let alone the supreme court, as such disputes are often settled before administrative bodies responsible for consumer protection, or possibly before mediation, conciliation, arbitration, etc. forums. Here, we can and must mention the activities of legal representatives - solicitors, legal advisers and notaries - who practise law first-hand, so to speak, at close quarters. Lawyers, as we say, are the first judges of a case. According to Béni Grosschmid, '[w]ith regard to the raw material of legal life, it is the lawyer who actually carries out the initial processing. It is the lawyer who first filters out the legal formulas, i.e. the outlines of the phenomenon, from the raw material presented by the party.[7] Conclusions that can be drawn in connection with legal phenomena in practical life can therefore come from many layers and in many different ways. It is also true that, in terms of its functioning and development, private law is fundamentally built from the bottom up (from the subjects of civil law).
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Visszaugrás
