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• A Cutting-Edge” Criminal Procedure? : Some Reflections on the Modernization of Hungarian Criminal Procedure Law

  11-36.

  Mátyás Bencze

  Views:

  270

  The study analyses the new Hungarian Criminal Procedure Act that entered into force in the summer of 2018. One aspect of the analysis is whether certain institutions of the law fulfil the constitutional requirements of criminal procedure. The other aspect is a sociological one. The past decades have brought many new developments in the field of society, economy and technology. The study, therefore, also revolves around the question of whether the new Criminal Procedure Act provides an adequate response to these challenges. The main finding of the study is that the legislation made the first steps in the right direction, however it did not introduce all the changes that would be necessary for a fair and modern criminal procedure. Besides, the act reflects predominantly the interests of the authorities while the rights and interests of other participants of the criminal procedure are not taken into consideration with the same weight

• The main factors influencing the level of the knowledge of law

  71-95

  György Gajduschek

  Balázs Fekete

  Views:

  175

  The paper deals with the level of legal knowledge among the Hungarian population measured with a representative survey asking questions regarding the knowledge of certain constitutional, civil, administrative and procedural legal rules releant in everyday life. Our findings are compared to a research carried out in 1965, using the same questions. Furthermore we analysed the relationship of knowledge level as a dependent variable with (i) socio-demographic (gender, age, education, etc.), (ii) media consumption (some 30 written, electronic and internet-based items), (iii) interaction with the legal system (read a law, consulted with a lawyer, participated in a trial) and (iv) civic activity. We found that the level of education is crucial, and interaction with the legal system has some additional significant impact, too. All other independent variables seem to have less significance or no impact at all. The relative strength of explanatory variables has largely changed in the past decades and in some cases even the direction of impact altered (for example women seem to be more educated about the law nowadays, in a sharp contrast to the 1965 data.)

• 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

  11-28

  György Gajduschek

  Balázs Fekete

  Views:

  212

  Knowledge 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.

• Legal–Sociological Analysis of a Scottish Judicial Decision

  88-104

  Zsolt Nagy

  Views:

  108

  In 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.