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• The Constitutional Obstacles before the Promulgation of the Rome Statute

  45-59

  Marco Pesci

  Views:

  368

  July 17, 1998, can be considered as one of the most important milestones of the international judicial structure: it is the day when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by 120 states out of 148. Article 86 of Statute explicitly states that „States Parties shall […] cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.” As in the case of every international treaty, the principle of pacta sunt servanda enshrined in Article 26 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties states applies, which explicitly states that “every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.” As has been pointed out by the Permanent Court of International Justice, contracting states must make all the necessary internal measures which are required to fulfil its international obligations rising from a binding treaty. One could ask, why is this quite obvious argument important in the case of Hungary? Well, Hungary has ratified the Statute but still has not implemented it in its internal legislation. This can be considered as a serious constitutional omission, since if the Court would require the cooperation of Hungary – e.g. in the case of an arrest warrant – and it would not be able to fulfil it because of the lack of the internal legal norms, it would be considered as international legal responsibility of Hungary. In this article, I try to explore the reasons behind this omission and outline the possible solutions.

• Defences in International Criminal Law

  35-53

  Ferenc Sántha

  Views:

  126

  The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. The ICC Statute contains rules regarding grounds for excluding criminal responsibility but this list is not exhaustive since other defences are recognized in international (criminal) law. This essay will not examine the special procedural defences and other obstacles of punishability which are explicitly rejected by the ICC Statute but focus on the substantial defences in international law: the lack of responsibility under a certain age; insanity and intoxication; justifiable defence; necessity and duress; mistake; superior orders; belligerent reprisals and military necessity.

• Reflections on the validity of exculpatory clauses in light of Section 6:152 of the Hungarian Civil Code

  9-24

  Réka Pusztahelyi

  Views:

  206

  Section 6:152 of the Hungarian Civil Code (HCC) is an objective cap on the freedom of contract, it is an unconditional (absolute) and minimum protection to which all exculpatory clauses are subject. In this essay, this rule is examined in a wide and complex context. These exculpatory clauses are closely connected to the consent of an injured person or their  assumption of risk, or their waiver (especially waiving claims for damages) as unilateral juridical acts. The relationship between this statute and other grounds of invalidity shall also be examined, especially the connection to the invalidity rule of unfair standard contract terms.

• Determining the Period of Criminal Legal Limitation

  99-113

  Dávid Hadházi

  Views:

  306

  In my essay I examine the statutes of limitation in criminal law. Firstly, I give a general description of limitation, of its position in the Criminal Code and of its legal theory. Secondly, I review the legal history of limitation demonstrating the system of limitation in our first criminal code. After that, I outline the regulations concerning the period of limitation and then describe the way limitation is enforced in the statute of criminal procedure. Finally, I draw the conclusions of my essay in the form of a proposition de lege ferenda.