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• A Philosophical Approach to Law

  11-22

  Bjarne Melkevik

  Paksy Máté(Translator)

  Views:

  171

  Bjarne 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.

• Less is Sometimes More? The Guaranteeing Role of the Scope of the Second Instance Review in the first Hungarian Code of Criminal Procedure (Act XXXIII of 1896)

  Bálint Csaba Kelemen

  Views:

  29

  At the time of the codification of first Hungarian Code of Criminal Procedure, the legal literature regarded the limited scope of second-instance revision as a limitation of appeal in favour of the defendant, and placed it in this sense inside the procedural doctrinal system. This idea, which is quite alien to contemporary procedural thinking, which focuses on speeding up and facilitating proceedings, raises the question: what are the principles on which the limited scope of review is considered as a guarantee for the defendant? In order to answer this question, my aim in the present study is to explore the system of principles that shaped the turn-of-the-century jurisprudence concerning the legal power of the second instance to grant review.

• Reflections from the Viewpoint of Legal History on the Muslims in Hungary

  11-23

  Gábor Hamza

  Views:

  128

  The Islamic religion, on the basis of Act No. XVII promulgated in 1917 in the Kingdom of Hungary, was given the status of a „recognized” religion i.e. religious community (in Hungarian: „elismert felekezet”, in Latin „licita religio”). By virtue of this act the Islamic religion received the same legal status as the Baptist church in 1905. It has to be pointed out that according to the census taken in 1910 in the Kingdom of Hungary, including Croatia-Slovenia which enjoyed a large degree of autonomy, there were only as many as 757 citizens belonging to the Islamic religious community. In this study we examine the legal status of the Muslim Community in Hungary until the end of World War I. As a main conclusion it can be stated that the law of Muslims (ius personarum) had never became a part of the legal system of Hungary, and that Islamic law never confronted the ius patrium.

• The Legal Status of the Inventor in the First Hungarian Patent Act

  19-33

  László Papp

  Views:

  115

  The first Hungarian Act on Patents was adopted in 1895. The study examines the regulation of the inventor’s legal status in this act and the problems the legislature had to solve. In the first part of the study the inventor’s rights are described regarding the inventor’s personal and valuable rights and interests. By the beginning of the 20th century license became the most important valuable right and interest, although its regulation could not be found in any act. In fact, a decision of the Patent Court in 1928 declared the regulation of leasehold valid, which raised greater and greater difficulties in legal application from the second half of the 20th century. The second part of the study examines the inventor’s obligation of payment and functioning. The latter is one of the special features of the intellectual property system which is regulated by the Industrial Property Union.

• ’The more speech, the better’: Review of the Book of András Koltay on New Media and Freedom of Speech

  Gergely Gosztonyi

  Views:

  279

  At first glance, the new book of András Koltay seems to be a translation of his recently published volume, New Media and Freedom of Expression: Rethinking the Constitutional Foundations of the Public Sphere (Hart International, 2019). Therefore, one would expect that the work itself does not provide any new information to those who already know the original in English. That could not be less true. As we get to the bottom of this false impression, the review shows the many virtues and minor mistakes of the book.