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Right to a Healthy Environment in the Theory
24-38Views:244To protect the environment with the help of human rights is one possible way among others to fight against environmental degradation. Yet, does this idea fit into the system of human rights, taking into consideration the fact that the upmost goal of human rights is the protection of human dignity? Is the connection between the environment and the human dignity strong enough to protect the environment by human rights? The following conceptual paper searches for reasonable answers to these questions by analyzing the so-called right to a healthy environment. By doing so the links between human and environmental rights and the specialties of human rights will be examined in order to show why the right to a healthy environment could in theory fit into the system of human rights protection.
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The Concept of the Right to Food in Public International Law
86-99Views:187According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), at least 868 million people are undernourished nowadays. Combating against hunger and malnutrition shall not only be a moral duty, but a legally binding human rights obligation. The right to food is recognized firstly within the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, however nowadays it is considered to be a substantive right. This study deals with the key aspects of the right to adequate food in public international law, including its definition, content and enforcement, as well.
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Sustainability in Copyright Law
40-61Views:193The aim of the paper is to give an overview of the pathfinding process of the copyright law, and of the European and Hungarian endeavors in favour of the sustainability of the copyright law via the copyright specific aspects of sustainability. It then aims to summarize the achievements of the harmonization process and draw attention to the goals to be achieved. The topic is approached from a cultural economic perspective. The main topic is described via historical and current aspects of the balance search of copyright law. the paper reviews the background of the development and current situation of copyright law from the point of view of philosophy and fundamental rights. With the analysis of the dynamism of economic and moral rights the paper outlines the necessity of parallelism of the two parts of copyright law. The examination of competitiveness of copyright law tends to highlight the inseparability of competitiveness and sustainability and emphasizes their development as being interlinked.
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Central Issues of the Application of EU Law in the Recent Case Law of the Hungarian Constitutional Court
161-174Views:119The present article examines the recent case law of the Hungarian Constitutional Court as regards the constitutional framework and the judicial practice of the application of EU law. After a short overview of the early precedents, the article focuses on the case law subsequent to the adoption of the new Fundamental Law in 2012. In the recent decisions the need for cooperation with the EU Court of Justice is of special importance so the article reflects on this issue as well. The first part scrutinizes the case law concerning the constitutional limitations and control measures of the application of EU law, including the landmark decision of 22/2016 (XII. 5.). The second part focuses on the decisions delivered in constitutional complaint proceedings, which determine the constitutional requirements of the preliminary rulings procedure and the judicial obligation to give a reasoned decision.
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Additional Remarks on the Question of Civil Service Law as a Branch of Law
120-133Views:482The study focuses on the relationship between civil service law and labour law. In Hungary, there have been significant changes in the last decade regarding the regulation of civil service law. The types of the civil service legal relationships have increased, the forums and procedural rules for adjudicating civil service law related disputes have changed, and the number of public employees providing public services has rapidly decreased. This is of particular importance because the existence of these branches of the law is determined by legislation as well. The study concludes that the ability of civil service law to become an independent branch of law will be determined not by 'internal' developments but by legislative ambitions.
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The right to take collective action in EU law based on the European Pillar of Social Rights and the recent case law of the CJEU
9-24Views:237This paper is built around the workers’ fundamental right to take collective action and collective bargaining. Although, this right is firmly embedded in the majority of labour law systems in the social policy (meaning labour law, too) of the European Union, it is worth analysing it separately with an independent meaning. We can approach this right from the fundamental rights, the fundamental treaties or from certain directives, so we can find several questions that are difficult to answer properly. These problems are mostly catalysed by the necessary collision between the need for socially motivated legal protection and the fundamental economic freedoms. In my research, I analyse this right – along with some other connected ones – with the help of the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Pillar of Social Rights because the latter highlights the holistic approach in the current reforms of EU social policy.
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The Right to Maintain Contact within the Context of Fundamental and Personality Rights
Views:682It is self-evident that parents play an irreplaceable role in the lives of their children, influencing the child's physical, mental, and emotional well-being and behavior. It is therefore necessary that children maintain personal relations and direct contact with each parent, even if the marriage of his/her parents is permanently and irreparably damaged. The right to contact, which has a strong legal foundation in international conventions, is traditionally described as a right of the child, despite the fact that contact between parent and child is both a right and obligation of mothers, fathers and children. The right to contact is a Janus-faced, complex legal institution: although it is largely based on the fundamental right to private and family life guaranteed by constitutional norms, it plays a significant role in private law disputes as well. The aim of this article is to present the place of the right to contact within the Hungarian legal regime, emphasizing the enforcement of this right in the field of protection of basic and personality rights.
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Some Legal Challenges of Digital Inheritance with Special Regard to Privacy
84-98Views:295Digital inheritance, because of its complexity, cannot be considered uniformly. The elements of digital inheritance which can be considered as property are regulated by the law of succession. The personal elements of the digital inheritance are regulated by the right in memoriam and data protection laws. In the current Hungarian legal system the amendment of Act no. CXII of 2011 on the Right of Informational Self-Determination put the post-mortem privacy principle into regulatory form, in addition to the right to respect for the deceased which provides legal protection against violation of the memory of a deceased person.
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Impact of EU Law on National Criminal Law
79-93Views:111This paper aims to analyse the main linking points between EU law and national criminal law. For a long time, the criminal laws of the Member States have been heavily affected by EU law. This influence can be either negative or positive. The most lenient form of the positive effect is the assimilation principle, which does not seek to incorporate EU norms into national criminal law, only attempts to extend the latter’s applicability to the protection of the interests of the European Union. In the case of legal harmonization the Member States are required to adopt common criminal norms which aim to reduce the differences of the national criminal law systems. The most serious impact on national penal law is the supranational criminal legislation, which results not only in the approximation but the unification of the criminal laws of the Member States.
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Artificial Intelligence from the Viewpoint of Civil Law
28-41Views:1221The aim of this paper to examine the definition of artificial intelligence and how AI can be considered in the field of civil law. The topic is being studied by many authors around the world and they are urging the initiation of legislation. The reason is that technology is rapidly developing, but the legislation cannot cope with this. However, in order to protect individuals, it is important to have a legal assessment of artificial intelligence. As a first step, it might be helpful to define the technology from the viewpoint of civil law.
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Law and Artificial Intelligence: New character, old solutions? (Thoughts on the book of Jacob Turner)
137-145Views:500Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, buzzwords of the recent times. While the term was created in the 1950s, until recent times it was the domain of sci-fi writers, who tried to explore its impact on society and humanity. The recent breakthroughs in AI technology and the spread of AI based services created the need for lawmakers and legal scholars to try and tackle the problems that AI creates. Although there are a lot of publications in this area, the book from Jacob Turner stands out in the field. The author has researched the subject very well, and using this knowledge he asks and answers not only the most frequent questions, but also those questions that belong to the foundation of AI and law, and which are often overlooked. This review aims to present these questions and answers to the Hungarian public in a shorter form.
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The role of lien holder in the judicial execution procedure
139-158Views:242Lien is substantially characterized by priority in satisfaction, which is in the spotlight of the execution of the lien. The lien’s function and force as a security interest is determined by the rules of execution. Under Act V of 2013 on the Civil Code, out-of-court execution has become the main rule, however, judicial execution and liquidation proceedings remained available to enforce the lien. Furthermore, in order to protect the purpose of the pledge to serve as a collateral and to provide priority in satisfaction, the lien may also be enforced where the pledge has been seized and offered for sale in the execution proceedings initiated by a person other than the lien holder. In this case, the lien holder may join in the execution proceedings even if his/ her claim against the lienee as debtor is not yet due. otherwise, upon auctioning the pledge, the lien holder’s lien would terminate. The purpose of this study is to identify and address the issues of this specific type of execution that arise during implementation as well as the incompleteness of the applicable laws and regulations.
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Social Psychology of Law
158-162Views:247Book review on the book Hunyady György–Berkics Mihály (szerk.): A jog szociálpszichológiája – A hiányzó láncszem. ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, Budapest, 2015.
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The right to strike in the case-law of the ECtHR
115-133Views:242The right to strike has been long recognized as an important labour right in the European countries protected by constitutions and international conventions on labour and social rights. However, these international conventions mainly contain mere declarations to only pursue the right to strike and do not have an effective protection mechanism. Nevertheless, in the last few decades a human rights perspective on labour law gained ground and thus international organizations and international courts started to derive labour rights like the right to strike from civil and political rights and therefore some of these labour rights enjoy the same level of protection as the first generation human rights. In its recent judgements, the European Court of Human Rights stated that the right to strike is protected under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and developed a case law on the requirements of a lawful strike action, secondary strike actions and the restrictions of the right to strike.
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Possible improvements of the water law concepts
38-54Views:171The present article concentrates on the so-called water law concepts. As regards water law concepts, the article especially deals with the challenges of the Hungarian water management. The article has five main chapters. In the first chapter, the author focuses on the basis of the water law concepts, namely on natural, social and engineering sciences, furthermore, the author also determines the legal instruments which are able to provide proper links among the different water law concepts. The further four chapters analyse the water law concepts one by one; i.e. (a) ruling over waters, (b) water as an environmental component, (c) water as the subject of commercial deals (good or service), (d) water as cause of damage a.k.a. defence against water.
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The Indigenous Peoples’ Right to Cultural Identity in the Case-law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
145-163Views:272The 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.
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Multilevel System of Fundamental Rights Protection in Practice, in the Light of the Dismissal of Government Officials without Justification
120-141Views:148Today, 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.
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The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in the Enforcement of Environmental Liability
113-127Views:289Public participation is an essential part of the mechanism of dealing with environmental problems. Both the Aarhus Convention and Union law stipulate that citizens and environmental NGOs should be guaranteed access to justice that includes providing legal standing for environmental NGOs individuals and directly affected by a breach of environmental law. In accordance with the Environmental Liability Directive, persons adversely affected by environmental damage are entitled to ask the competent authorities to take action. However, there are major chellenges to the implementation of environmental legislation, faced by environmental NGOs in obtaining standing to bring legal challenges on environmental issues.
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Risks and Adverse Effects: Decisions of the Italian Constitutional Court on the Compulsory COVID-19 Vaccination
102-127Views:227In recent years, several judicial and constitutional court decisions have been handed down worldwide on the legality and constitutionality of the fundamental rights restrictive measures (including compulsory vaccination) imposed during the pandemic. Aside from Austria, Italy has imposed compulsory vaccination more widely than any other European country; moreover, the lack of vaccination has made it impossible for citizens to live their daily lives to such an extent that some scholars have even written of de facto compulsory vaccination. In December 2022, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled in three judgments against the petitions related to compulsory vaccination. After outlining the legal context and the scholars’ positions on mandatory Covid vaccination, this paper examines these decisions, focusing on the arguments on which the Court saw justification for compulsory vaccination.
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Social Dumping in the Face of Cross-border Collective Agreements and Actions: A Dilemma of the European Legal Practice on the Edge of Law and Economy in the Light of the Framework of International Standards
180-202Views:171In this paper I outline the objectives of the ILO, the conventions relevant to collective bargaining and action, and furthermore the pronouncements of the ILO supervisory bodies. After describing social dumping I examine the jurisprudence of the European Union regarding the collision of fundamental freedoms and collective labour rights in the light of international labour standards. My observation is that the hierarchical relationship between fundamental freedoms and labour rights in favour of the former cannot be maintained even based on EU law.
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A Philosophical Approach to Law
11-22Views:171Bjarne Melkevik’s book is one of the best comprehensive treatments of legal philosophy currently available in Canada. First of all, the reader will find in the form of a long introduction a bookchapter translated into Hungarian, which is a general description of Melkevik’s jurisprudential views, provided by Mate Paksy. The chosen chapter organizes the reflexions on legal philosophy into three interrelated ques- tions. Melkevik’s first, thought-provoking question is as follows: why do we need legal philosophy? He views legal philosophy not as foundational legal scholarship, but mainly as an elucidation of public, reflexive argumentation on law which isn’t at
odds either with an empirical methodology. The second question concerns whether studying legal philosophy is useful for lawyers. Here Melkevik endorses again a post-positivist position according to which both law and legal philosophy are essentially practical discourses. Though the third part of the paper is heavy with disciplinary boundary-drawing, which emerges from questioning the place of legal scholarship vis-à-vis other, more empirical branches of social sciences such as history or anthropology, Melkevik’s reflexions here are still inspired by a sort of Neo-Kantian legal philosophy and Habermas’ communicative ethics.
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Knowledge of Law in the Hungarian Population Today and a Half Century Ago – A Comparative Analysis based on Kálmán Kulcsár’s Empirical Survey of 1965
11-28Views:248Knowledge 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.
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Claims for Compensation Based on the Infringement of Regulations Applicable to Procurement Procedures
11-30Views:160The study is concerned with those claims for compensation, which are based on the infringement of regulations applicable to procurement procedures. After the placing of the compensation within the public procurement remedy system, we outline those conducts, which can cause damage in the course of the public procurement procedure (e.g. contracting authority’s withdrawal from the public procurement, unlawful withdrawal of the tender, failing of contract conclusion, etc.). during the review of these cases, we heighten the differences existing between the classical civil law claims and the claims based on the infringement of public procurement rules.
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Legal–Sociological Analysis of a Scottish Judicial Decision
88-104Views:124In this essay I have attempted to show the Scottish tradition of criminal law and attitudes of legal profession and the whole Scottish society about the crimes trough one case. This criminal case was held before the Scottish criminal appeal court in 1989, where for the first time, a man could be guilty under the Scottish law of raping his wife while the couple lived together. This was a point that could show the flexibility of Scottish law while the english law was either unwilling or unable to make a change.
This case shows us that the judges in Scotland claim to represent the social attitudes through legal devices but this representation is not almost uncountable because the courts attempt to operate within the basically conservative traditions. Parallel of the above mentioned the courts try to use the alternative histories of law and the voices of practical lawyers, legal doctrines through the conflicting interpretations in order to make right decisions.
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Book Review: Ződi, Zsolt: Platforms, Robots and the Law. New Regulatory Challenges in the Information Society
213-216Views:160Zsolt Ződi’s second book was published in 2018 by Gondolat Kiadó under the title Platforms, Robots and the Law and the subtitle New Regulatory Challenges in the Information Society. At first glance, the reader could expect that the book will be dealing with a variety of topics not closely associated with one another, however, we experience the exact opposite when delving into the book. Similarly to Zsolt Ződi’s first book, he dissects a very relevant subject, guiding the reader through a maze of concepts and problems that did not even exist before the 21st century. He does so in such a way that it remains comprehensible and perceptible.