Knowledge of law is certainly one component of legal culture. Due to the support of the Hungarian Research Funds (OTKA) the authors of this paper carried out a comprehensive empirical analysis of this issue in Hungary. In doing so they strongly relied on Kálmán Kulcsár’s findings and insights stemming from his pathbreaking studies half a century ago.

The empirical study was carried out by the Szonda Ipsos Market and Opinion Research Institute in the framework of an omnibus questionnaire survey with a random sample of 1000 people in 2013. Thirteen questions essentially similar to certain questions used by Kulcsár in 1965 (for instance: Have you ever read a bill or an act? Have you ever participated in a judicial process? Who or which body enacts a bill in Hungary?) were posed in order to provide a possibility for the comparison of the actual results and those of Kulcsár.

We found that the general level of knowledge of law had increased substantially in the past decades. Knowledge related to constitutional law is the prominent example of this growth and it can definitely be coupled with the functioning of the democratic political system in the last 25 years. However, except from constitutional law, the growth of legal knowledge is due almost solely to the increased level of education and not a generally improved legal consciousness of the society.

The paper examines the Hungarian constitutional framework which determines the relationship between domestic and EU law. The constitutional foundations changed in 2011 when the new constitution, the Fundamental Law was adopted. The former 1989 Constitution contained in Article 2/A the so-called ’European clause’ adopted before EU accession, which was referred to as the main constitutional basis of Hungary’s EU membership by the Constitutional Court. The new Fundamental Law contains a seemingly similar ’European clause’ in Article E. The paper scrutinizes the question whether the former and the new clauses are truly similar and concludes that opposite to the Constitutional Court’s point of view the new European clause should be interpreted differently from the former, which might lead to a different, less Europe-friendly approach towards EU membership.

Press correction is a special way to defend personality rights on the basis of civil law. Its main objective is that if someone states or rumours a false fact or makes a fact appear untrue about a person in a given publication, the affected person has the right to submit his claim – as soon as possible – in order to have a rectifying communication be given out in the particular publication showing which part of the injurious publication states false, unfounded facts or makes a fact appear untrue and what is the reality. If the publisher does not satisfy its duty to correct the injurious publication voluntarily, the affected person – in a short period – has the right to enforce his claim for press correction in an accelerated judicial procedure which allows only restricted production of evidence.

The most frequent question of the press correctional lawsuits is whether the content of the publication turns out to be a statement of fact or an opinion. The opinion, assessment, critique and debates about society, politics or art cannot serve as a basis for press correction. The statement of fact is a declaration about a given momentum of reality, the assertion or rumour that something has happened in a certain way or that something really exists. In opposition to the statement of fact, the opinion expresses a value judgement or critique, and false facts cannot be concluded from it even indirectly. It is hard to define on an objective basis if a declaration is a statement of fact or an opinion. As life creates a wide range of various situations, the developing legal interpretation by the judicial practice has a great impact especially as regards the distinction between a statement of fact and an opinion, the interpretation of the publication or the determination of the content and form of the press correction.

Am 10. januar 2015 begann eine neue Zeitrechnung für das Zivilprozessrecht der Europäischen Union. Die Brüssel I. Verordnung (44/2001/EG) als wichtigste rechtsquelle wurde mit einer Neufassung (1215/2012/EU) abgelöst. Die neue Verordnung schaffte die Vollstreckbarerklärung (Exequatur) als zwischen der Anerkennung ausländischer Entscheidungen und derer Vollstreckung keilendes Verfahren ab, was in der Rechtsliteratur als Paradigmenwechsel bewertet wird. Aus diesem Anlaß stellt der Verfasser eine Bilanz auf. Ihre Abhandlung befasst sich mit der rechtlichen Natur der Vollstreckbarerklärung, mit der Anwendung der Verfahrensregeln in dem ungarischen Rechtsverkehr und widmet ein Kapitel den Argumenten und Gegenargumenten in Bezug auf die Abschaffung der Vollstreckbarerklärung.

Le législateur hongrois voulait un moyen efficace contre la violence familiale. Ce moyen est devenu l’injonction d’éloignement qui existe dans la procédure pénale hongroise depuis 2006 comme une mesure coercitive du code de procédure pénale et depuis 2009, comme une ordonnance référé. Cette étude souhait résumer la régime de l’injonction d’éloignement en Hongrie aux propositions initiatives des exigences, qui sont montrées par l’Union Européenne. À partir de 2004, on doit accorder une grande attention aux préceptes européennes parce que les règles européennes font partie de notre vie. On doit mentionner la Directive 2011/99/UE du Parlement Européen et du Conseil du 13 décembre 2011 relative à la décision de protection européenne et le Réglement 606/2013 du Parlement Européen et du Conseil, parce qu’ils déterminent la protection européenne en matière pénale et civilie aussi. L’étude est fermée par les propositions, pour améliorer l’efficacité de l’injonction d’éloignement et assurer une protection de plus haut niveau pour les victimes de la violence familiale. On ne peut pas éviter l’actualité des propositions, en considérant la codification du code de procédure pénale.

The accession of the European Union (EU) to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has been on the agenda of the EU for long. Although the Lisbon Treaty settles this question in theory by obliging the EU to accede, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) resorted to its rights laid down in the Treaties and published its Opinion 2/13 on the matter by the full Court. This opinion scrutinizes the draft document concerning accession. According to the opinion the EU cannot accede to the ECHR in the present form because the draft document is not in compliance with the special characteristics and features of EU law, therefore it would require the amendment or reorganisation of the whole EU legal system. By this judgement the ECJ outlines the legal impediments in the way of the accession. The main objective of our article – after summarizing the brief history and legal framework of the accession – is to present and evaluate the critical elements of accession determined by the ECJ and predict the decision’s possible consequences.

Today, in the European multi-level and cooperative constitutional area the European Convention on Human Rights, the constitutional value provisions of the EU Treaties together with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, as well as the constitutions of the member states of the EU function as parallel constitutions. The legal remedies offered by international forums by nature are subsidiary, because it is desirable that legal issues of human rights be solved by the states at national level. The obligation of the exhaustion of domestic legal remedies as a procedural precon- dition is needed in order that the national level should have the chance to remedy the violation of human rights within its own legal system.

The present paper focuses on Art. 8 para. (1) of Act LVIII of 2010 on the legal status of government officials, which states that the employer has the right to terminate the contract of goverment officials by two months’ notice period without any justification. The research is of considerable interest because the dismissed officials – who, in my opinion, de facto suffered injury by violation of human rights – were forced to turn to international forums because of the fact that the Hungarian legal system was not able to grant them adequate reparation. Therefore, the examination also evaluates the current level of fundamental rights arbitration and the jurisdiction using fundamental principles in Hungary.

Restrictions on the freedom of expression have been subject to mixed and constant debates. The debates are increasing in the case of free speech on the internet. In the recent past the Hungarian Constitutional Court had to examine this problem and contribute to the discourse. This article presents decision 19/2014 of the Hungarian Constitutional Court concerning the freedom of expression on the internet. The subject-matter of the case was the liability for the comments. The study intends to show the arguable points of the Court’s reasoning.

Book review on Bódiné Beliznai Kinga's book, the title is "A bíbor méltóság, a sárga árulás. Szimbólumok és rituálék a jogtörténetben" (Balassi

Kiadó, Budapest, 2014.)