Guardians of the Constitution

Solyom, Laszlo

In 1989 the term constitutional jurisdiction was unheard of. Because of the change of system, law is no longer a tool of politics: now any political objective may be realised exclusively within the framework of the constitution.
A novelty, unique in world history, of the Hungarian change of system is in the fact that the Constitutional Court had been established before any free elections had been held, thus supervising the revolutionary change of the political system from the constitutional aspect. A peculiarity of the Hungarian Constitutional Court consists in the abundance of abstract competences and in the fact that anybody may propose a revision of a legal rule. The Constitutional Court has developed a coherent system of the imperfect and contradictory law on constitutional jurisdiction and of the Constitution, in doing so it has also had to design itself. This covered also the externalities - including, for example premises and gowns. In addition to clarifying the content of individual rights and institutions, its role as positive codifier has also become ever more important: its judgements are general rules serving as a framework for political legislation.

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