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Opinion or statement of fact?
48-68Views:254Press 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.
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Luxembourg v Strasbourg – Legal Impediments in the Process of the Accession of the EU to the ECHR
101-119Views:123The 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.
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The Practice of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights concerning the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples, with special regard to the Ogoni Case
127-143Views:167The aim of the current article is to analyse the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights offered by the African human rights mechanism by introducing its institutional framework and jurisprudence. The author has the opinion that the African mechanism has followed in the footsteps of the Inter-American system and has interpreted the already existing substantial norms in an evolutive manner; thus achieving tremendous results in the acknowledgement and protection of indigenous rights. They did so with such success that now the “master” – namely the Inter-American Commission on Human rights – is quoting the student. It follows from the above mentioned lines that – according to the firm opinion of the author – the African mechanism worth the attention both present time, both in the future, due to the simple fact that new trends regarding indigenous rights may arise from the practice of the African Commission.
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Collision of Judicial Opinions in the Practice of the Curia
Views:34This article examines the 2/2022 PJE Unity Decision of the Curia from the perspective of divergent theoretical and dogmatical views expressed in minority opinions. The case study compares the dissenting opinions and the majority opinion of the judges and aims at demonstrating the fact that theoretical disagreement between judges has a huge impact on legal practice and on the issue of how judges decide cases. The hypothesis of the article is that – in hard legal cases – the reason for the differing opinions is the different theoretical convictions of judges. It seems evident that two legal practitioners, who have different views on cardinal issues of law, such as the concept or the purpose of law, interpret legal norms differently. Using the method of qualitative case analysis, the article analyses the arguments appearing in the justification of the decision.
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Civil Review: Book Review of “Civil Society in Europe - Minimum Norms and Optimum Conditions of its Regulation”
164-176Views:264Civil 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.
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Crimean Secession in International Law
9-28Views:311This article provides detailed insights into the validity of remedial secession, the two major judicial opinions that have addressed it (Kosovo advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and the Quebec Secession Reference case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada), and the steep, but evolving, path to legitimacy it may now be travelling. This article does so within the context of Crimea’s secession referendum, declaration of independence, and de facto statehood, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It covers the international community’s reaction to these events – and the disparity among academic reactions to the vitality of remedial secession. It traces the UN General Assembly’s 2014 Crimean debate – concluding that it is the most authoritative referee for judging Russia’s claim to the validity of the Crimean secession.
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Public Hearing as a Safeguard of Fair Trial in Criminal Proceedings
46-61Views:148The primary aim of my paper is to examine the questions related to the institute of public hearing. As we know, publicity is one of the most important safeguards of fair trial in criminal procedure. In my opinion, it is necessary to examine these procedural questions in a scientific depth in the light of both the case decisions of the High Courts and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. The study examines one of the important pledges of a fair trial, the effectiveness of the basic principle of publicity in the criminal procedure. It explores the principle from a dogmatic point of view, and also in the light of both the European standards and the regulations currently in force. It mentions the limitation and exclusion of publicity, and the legal consequences of violating publicity in a great detail. Classic legal institutes are shifted into new dimensions by the technical improvements of the modern world and the media broadcasts from courts, and the paper points it out that for the sake of having an undisturbed court hearing and verification, some modifications on certain legal regulations may be justified. The study also mentions the standpoints of legal literature regarding the notion of publicity in detail, and by summarizing them it attempts to define the notion of the given basic principle as per aspects of law science, considering the characteristics of the 21st century. After the establishment of law theory principles, besides introducing the regulation in force and touching upon court practice, my paper analyzes questions that are more and more current, especially due to the reports by the electronic media, which sometimes cannot only disturb the order of the court, but also the procedure of verification. So, after the examination of basic hypotheses and the legal institute, it draws the conclusion that the development of the legal institute justifies the modification of the procedural law in the future, especially in connection with informing the press.
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The Role of the Local Goverments in the Changed System of Environmental Public Administration
79-93Views:185This study investigates the transformation of environmental protection as a specialized administrative duty in Hungary, with special attention on the (changing) roles of local self-governments in this area. Following the outline of the general correlations within the topic, the study inspects several individual administrative fields, with attention given to the relationship with environmental protection policies. Our plan is to extend this analysis in the future, in hopes of covering additional specialised administrative areas as well. Our firm opinion is that the solutions provided by the sectorial approach inherent in our administrative system proved to be ineffective insolving today’s global issues. To ensure an effective environmental protection strategy, the organizations of public administration must be involved with larger roles assigned to them. Although the methods of regulation in this area are diverse, the most widespread approach proves to be the direct administrative intervention, even nowadays.
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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:139Today, 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 Basic Regulatory Issues of Agricultural Application of Precision Genome Editing and the Precautionary Principle
42-64Views:274The rapidly developing gene manipulation techniques (more recently „gene editing”) have long been controversial, which is reflected in the evolution of legal regulation in Europe. Hungaryʼs Fundamental Law (Art. XX.) clearly states that Hungarian agriculture desires to remain free from genetically modified organisms. According to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA resolution, 2017), the results of the new techniques (without transgenic implantation) are not regarded as GMOs (by the proper application of the genetic engineering law), these new techniques are not governed by the provisions of the Fundamental Law. Recently, a lawsuit was filed before the Court of Justice of the European Union in which the main question was whether GMOs should be considered the result of new techniques (if not, they do not need to be licensed). In the light of a detailed analysis of the precautionary principle, the study examines the question of whether genetic engineering or its results cover the scope of the legislation. According to the author, this question (as long as the revision of the regulation is not on the agenda) is not for the genetic technologists and plant breeders, but for the lawyers to decide. The conclusion of the study is that genetic engineering, respectively its results are subject to the regulation.
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Is the Implementation of Home Office Legally Feasible? The Criteria for Home Office and its Framework Within Employment Law
59-82Views:1161The 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.
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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:212Knowledge 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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The Enforcement of Children’ s Rights in the Family Law Book of the new Civil Code
39-59Views:374In Hungary, the new Civil Code came into force on 15th March 2014.Tthe fourth book of which (the Family Law Book) contains the rules of family law. These rules of family law have changed in some areas compared to what they were previously. For example, developments have occurred in the field of children’s rights. In the current study the author examines the enforcement of children’s rights guaranteed by the Family Law Book. As a main conclusion of this indepth analysis, the author states that the new Civil Code ensures greater protection and better enforcement of children’s rights. Namely, the Family Law Book determines the children’s rights in more detail, particularly the right to freedom of opinion, the right to maintaining relationship, and the right to support. In addition, new paradigm changes can be noticed in the Family Law Book which are in connection with the change of parent-and-child relations and the greater consideration of children’s rights and interests.