In the preface, the content of the given issue is described by the editor in the form of 5-6 line article descriptions. In addition to the latest changes to the journal, here is the explanation of the Latin phrase on the back cover.

The aim of the three-year project “Novelties of Criminal Law in Legal Consciousness” was to measure the knowledge and attitudes of lay people concerning criminal law including regulatory novelties with a questionnaire-based survey. In this paper, the authors analyse the responses to questions related to active bribery of public officials. The research has verified our hypothesis that the average person has a fragmented knowledge even about this sector of criminal law. However, this is partly due to the fact that the respondents – compared to the differentiation of the legal regulation – usually have schematic knowledge on the topic. The answers were strongly influenced by attitudes towards this type of criminality. It was not substantiated, however, that this knowledge is substantially affected by socio-economic factors, by media consumption or by encountering criminality. Our hypothesis regarding the novelty of regulation has been only partially proven: there are more than three times more people whose answers reflect the old regulation than the new one. However, this was not necessarily due to actual knowledge of the older regulation, but rather to the fact that it was more in line with respondents insensitivity to legal distinctions.

With the development of technology many new legal institutions were regulated in the criminal justice systems. Electronic monitoring is one of those, which from the Hungarian perspective first appeared in the form of home detention in criminal procedure law. Later on, in 2015 the technology of electronic monitoring was implemented in prison law as the institution of reintegrative surveillance. The regulation is basically appropriate and according to the experiences could be seen as effective. However, there are some related theoretical questions which need to be answered. For example, the question of widening the potential application of reintegrative surveillance, or the relation between reintegrative surveillance and imprisonment or conditional release. Answering these questions is important as presumably the technological development won’t stop on this level, thus we can expect the widening of electronic monitoring in Hungary as well.

EU cookie laws have been in place since 2011, but before the entry into force of the GDPR, the conditions for consent were interpreted differently across Europe. Since the GDPR came into effect, there has been a great deal of interest in how it applies to cookies and similar technologies. The GDPR updated the EU’s longstanding digital privacy framework, with key additions including tightening the rules around consent as a legal basis for processing personal data. The purpose of this study is to clarify for data controllers the rules they need to pay attention to, in order to ensure that the use of cookies on its websites is strictly in accordance with applicable laws

The year of 2020 was the challenge of “home office”. Although, the publicity uses the term of “home office” as the legal construction of working from home, this approach is misleading. Moreover, the Hungarian Labour Code does not contain any regulation about “home office”, while this legal source embraces two other methods in connection to work from home. These legal institutes are the teleworking and the legal relationship of outworkers. The problem with the aforementioned legal institutes is that the parties must take into account several rules and must apply these solutions regularly, on a permanent basis. However according to the legal literature, the “home office” is created by the economic and human resource management practice of the employers, where they intend to employ the workers mainly at home irregularly, on an ad-hoc basis. At the same time, “home office” does not have a legal framework in the Hungarian Labour Code, therefore the legal literature has been trying to find a real solution for this employment method in the general norms of the Labour Code. In the following article we are going to use the home office definition of the literatures and highlight the background legal institutes and concepts of this working method. Although we are going to set our opinion about which legal institute may be applicable in this sense, in the conclusion we are going to emphasise that legislation and rules regarding “home office” are indispensable.

The present study examines the fundamental rights of disabled people using the service of social farms – especially people with disabilities and with reduced capacity to work. These rights are essential for these people in order to ensure their employment. These people are often cut off from the labour market, moreover, they cannot be present there. Therefore, fundamental rights ensured within the Fundamental Law of Hungary play a significant role for treating and employing them equally. Labour law and social law protection confirms this constitutional protection.

One of the most important pieces of legislation in Serbian history was the Serbian Civil Code (SCC) of 1844, which remained in force for more than 100 years. It dates back to the time when the country was still part of the Ottoman Empire and survived the state law regimes of the Principality of Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbs-Croats and Slovenians and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia before being liquidated by socialist Yugoslavia in 1945. From the moment it was created, there had been serious criticism, such as that it was modelled on the Austrian civil code and thus did not correspond to Serbian legal-social relations, and so there was no indication that it would be a durable piece of legislation. In its 100-year history, most of the criticism concerned the discriminatory provisions on women. Mostly, the legal situation of married women was detrimental, as they had no capacity to act, and were represented by their husbands. Their proclaimed equality took place in 1946, but they actually received the same legal status as men in the late 20th century.

The present paper examines the protection of cultural identity in the case-law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), where this question has primarily been dealt with in connection with the rights of indigenous peoples. Although not expressly guaranteed in the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), the right to cultural identity is found to be protected in the treaty due to the IACHR’s evolutionary interpretation of the right to life and the right to property, as well as other first-generation human rights contained in the ACHR. Issued in the Spring of 2020, the IACHR decision in the case Lhaka Honhat vs Argentina puts into a new perspective the protection of the right to cultural identity. Unlike before, it was clearly established that cultural rights are autonomous and judicially enforceable under Article 26 of the ACHR. At the same time, the ICHR’s revolutionary approach provides new opportunities for the judicial protection of environmental rights claims based on Article 26 of the ACHR as well.

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic is forcing such political, economic and social responses from the leaders of the nations of the world which in many cases have never been seen before. Excellent new concepts have been formed through the work of professionals, and there have been initiatives that have proven in the short term to be not well-founded. The present study was created in order not to miss the chance to examine the established practices, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the crisis, as this year can offer many lessons for decision-makers for the future.

Civil society is under pressure in many countries. Governments appear to be less and less tolerant of the opinion of civil society advocates, rights defenders and watchdog organizations. This book is given relevance by Lex NGO which restricts the operation and implementation of the activities of Hungarian non-governmental organizations. The volume of studies defines the minimum standards and optimal conditions that are essential for key players in civil society to be able to achieve the goals set by organizations and to contribute to the formation of democratic public opinion. In my analysis I placed more emphasis on those parts of the volume that may be important in the amendment of Lex NGO and similar legislation.