Free Speech in the New Hungarian Constitutional Practice

The paper examines the jurisprudence of the Hungarian Constitutional Court in the area of freedom of expression. The Hungarian court, which began its work immediately after the political transformation on 1 January 1990, is the most active institution implementing the Austriarr-German type of judicial review in the Central East European countries. The author, who was for seven years chief adviser to the president of the Court, attempts to analyze the most significant decisions in which Hungarian judges articulated a special interpretation of the freedom of expression.The author argues that the Hungarian Constitutional Court may have gone farthest in stating the privileged nature of freedom of expression. In doing so, the Hungarian judges adopted verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights, Western constitutional courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The author cites as examples the Hungarian Constitutional Court’s decision on racial hate speech, which applied the famous “clear and present danger” test of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the opinion that annulled the “offense against the authorities or against officials” provision of the Criminal Code

Constitution · Constitutional court · Democracy · German · Human rights · Jurisprudence · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Supreme court · European and International Law Studies · European Criminal Justice and Data Protection · History · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law

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  Jozsef Borocz•American Journal of Sociology•2001

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