Some Values and Guarantees in the Ten-Year-Old Hungarian Constitution, with a Look at the Constitutional Arrangements of the Countries Founding the European Integration

In this study, certain values and guarantee institutions of the Hungarian Fundamental Law are analysed in the light of the constitutions of the countries that have established European integration – Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium. Among the value systems, Christian culture and the family have been examined, while the study has also focused on the guarantees important for living conditions, such as strict public finance provisions, rules on emergency powers, and provisions guaranteeing a high level of protection for future generations and the environment. In addition to the analysis of the constitutions, the study makes several references to the jurisprudence of the countries concerned and to the most important aspects of constitutional developments in recent years.

Emergency Law Responses and the Covid-19 Pandemic (Global State of Democracy Thematic Paper 2021)

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have implemented a variety of extraordinary legal and policy measures to protect lives, mitigate the spread of the virus, and prevent health systems from breaking down. These measures have often included curbing some human rights, restricting travel, shuttering up classrooms, suspending government services, ordering the temporary closure of businesses, controlling or curtailing news reporting, and sometimes delaying elections. To do this, many governments have activated emergency legal frameworks that provide for the assumption of emergency powers by the executive and, in some cases the weakening or setting aside of ordinary democratic checks and balances. It is helpful to understand the different types of laws relied upon (or not) by governments to justify their assumption of emergency powers and their imposition of emergency measures. This paper examines and compares different types of legal bases for emergency powers, built-in safeguards and constraints specific to each type of emergency regime, the factors that may influence choices about which emergency legal response to apply, and the associated advantages and risks

Performing COVID-19 Control in Finland: Interpretative Topic Modelling and Discourse Theoretical Reading of the Government Communication and Hashtag Landscape

This article discusses discursive transformations in the performance of the government and the “hashtag landscape,” studying Twitter discussions and the female-led government of one of the youngest Prime Ministers in the world, Sanna Marin of Finland. Among the countries in Europe, Finland has been, in the period of analysis of March 2020 to January 2021, one of the least affected countries by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our datasets from both Twitter discussions and the government’s press conferences in 2020 reveal which were the emerging topics of the pandemic year in Finland and how they were discussed. We observe a move from consensual governmental political control to control in the hands of the authorities and ministers responsible, performing a different basis for the pandemic. On the “hashtag landscape,” facemasks continually emerge as an object of debate, and they also become a point of trust and distrust that the government cannot ignore. In terms of comparative governance, this article also notes how the emergency powers legislation shifted control to the government from regional authorities and municipalities in spring 2020, and by that autumn, those powers were returned to regional and local bodies. We recognize several themes that were contested and the discursive field’s transformations and interplay with the authorities.

Introduction: The Return of the Exception

The history of the 20th century, and more recently the two-decades long war on terror, have taught us the lesson that the normalisation of the state of exception (intended here as the proliferation of legal instruments regulating emergency powers, and their constant use in varied situations of crisis) is never immune from the risk of leaving long-lasting impacts of legal and political systems. With the “Return of the Exception” we intend to bring to the fore the fact that in the pandemic the state of exception has re-appeared in its “grand” version, the one that pertains to round-the-clock curfews and strong limitations to the freedom of movement and assembly, all adorned by warfare rhetoric of the fight against an invisible enemy – which, given the biological status of viruses, it cannot but be ourselves. But “return” here must be intended also in its psychoanalytic meaning. Much like the repressed that lives in a state of latency in the unconscious before eventually returning to inform consciousness and reshape behaviour, the state of exception is an element that remains nested in law’s text before reappearing in a specific moment with forms and intensity that are not fully predictable. Still, it remains cryptic whether the pandemic inaugurates a new epoch of liberal legality – the post-law – or just augurs its structural crisis.

The dual penal empire: Emergency powers and military courts in Palestine/Israel and beyond

This article explores the duality of emergency powers and criminal law in old and new formations of empire. Set against the backdrop of the US “war on terror,” I link discussions around current articulations of empire and the treatment of “enemy combatants,” illuminating new connections between empire, emergency, and “enemy penology.” Focusing on Palestine/Israel, I explore the duality created by emergency powers and criminal law from the late British Empire to contemporary Israel/Palestine as an “imperial formation.” Through a genealogy of emergency legislation, military courts, and two case studies from the 1980s Israel, I show how emergency powers constitute a penal regime that complements ordinary criminal law through prosecutions of racialized enemy populations under a distinct exclusionary and punitive legality. Building on Markus Dubber's Dual Penal State, I demonstrate how the—openly illiberal—dual penal empire (i) suppresses political resistance (insurgency, rebellion, and terrorism) and (ii) institutionalizes enemy penology through emergency statutes and military courts. Thus, in imperial formations, such as Israel and the US—which deny their illiberal features—emergency powers are framed as preventive security and denied as part of the penal system, while enemy penology operates in plain sight.

Legal Approaches to Responding to Emergencies: Covid-19 as a Case Study

During the Covid-19 pandemic, numerous countries invoked different constitutional provisions and laws to respond to the unexpected health crisis. Constitutional INSIGHTS No. 6 examines the use and non-use of state of emergency powers by countries across Asia and the Pacific in response to the COVID 19 pandemic, and the implications for other democratic rights and processes.

Adeia in Fifth-Century Athens

This article discusses the rationale of adeia (immunity) in the fifth-century Athenian legal system. It argues that adeia was designed to grant a temporary suspension of the effect of a law in exceptional circumstances without allowing for any permanent legal change. This article explores the origin of adeia and the relevant ideology underpinning the legal procedure. It provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the legal procedure and analyses the extensive use of adeia for collecting information during the investigation of the profanation of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the herms in 415 BC. This article also discusses the implications of the use of adeia for public investigation and emergency powers in Classical Athens.