The post-2010 ‘Democratic Rule of Law’ practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court under a rule by law governance

The paper focuses on the democratic rule of law principle as it appeared in the practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court under the 1989 Constitution and the 2012 Fundamental Law. The rule of law doctrine had a paramount role in the argumentation of the Court in the 1990s as a normative fact and a programme of the Hungarian state. Under the Fundamental Law introduced in 2012, however, it has been somewhat relegated to the background in case law. The study first recalls the main achievements and characteristics of the democratic rule of law state interpretations of the Constitutional Court and then focuses on developments since the introduction of the Fundamental Law. On the one hand, it outlines the constitutional and institutional capacity of the court regarding the protection of the rule of law principle. On the other hand, it reveals the characteristics of the post-FL interpretation through case studies in the field of legal certainty and judicial independence, both of which were representative elements of the pre-2010 constitutional practice from the point of view of the democratic rule of law state doctrine.

Stan wyjątkowy w perspektywie filozofii prawa. Próba definicji

The aim of this paper is to propose a definition of the state of exception within the framework of the philosophy of law. The nature of the state of exception is both a legal and a political one. For this reason, it is a subject of inquiry in various disciplines. As a consequence of its hybrid character, state of exception is hard to define, which leads to definitional scepticism. As a criterial definition is impossible to reach, I believe that it should be replaced with a paradigmatic one. Such a definition should take into account the acquis of, among others, philosophy, history or political science, so that it may apply to different methodological approaches. In order to do so, I present the main definitional groups (state of exception as a normative fact, as a constitutional dictatorship, as a political fact, and as a legal void). Next, using the criteria that are common to all those definitions, I propose and analyse three constitutive elements of the state of emergency: a crisis, a suspension of ordinary laws, and a temporary character of this suspension. The definition I propose can help to assess whether a given state is a form of a state of exception. This is of a particular relevance as emergency laws are nowadays widely discussed in the context of terrorist threats.

Credence-First Epistemology

Chapter 10 discusses the credence-first approach to coarse-grained attitudes. It is explained how the view underwrites a robust realism about the attitudes and why it bolsters the view that belief, disbelief, and suspended judgement are self-standing states. It is explained how credence-first epistemology dovetails with how we ordinarily describe coarse- and fine-grained attitudes and how it makes good sense of ways in which coarse- and fine-grained attitudes march-in-step in their production and rationalization of action. Further, it is explained how credence-first epistemology fits with our use of reductio-based arguments. So it’s argued that there is something deeply right in the credence-first approach. But the chapter closes with a pair of problems for the approach: credence is very often absent in the presence of coarse-grained attitudes—as a matter of descriptive fact—and credence is very often misplaced in the presence of everyday evidence—as a matter of normative fact.

Guided Tour

Chapter 1 provides a guided tour of the book. It begins with an explanation of the divide between formal and informal work on epistemic rationality and that between work on belief and credence. Six Basic Assumptions are sketched to get the ball rolling. They are the view that normative fact is grounded in natural fact, that propositional attitudes are binary relations, that propositional attitudes are functional in nature, that such attitudes are subject to epistemic appraisal, that transitions between them are too, and that models of such rationality are acceptable only if they match the target phenomena (in a sense of ‘match’ to be glossed).

Sozialstaatlichkeitin Europe? A Conflict-of-Laws Approach to the Law of the EU and the Proceduralisation of Constitutionalisation

“Sozialstaatlichkeit”is a collection of essays dedicated to the author ofNegative Freiheitsrechte und gesellschaftliche Selbstorganisation? Reflections on the survival of welfarism in the postnational constellations after his analyses of globalisation and Europeanisation? Affirmative references to the Discourse Theory of Law and Habermasian notions of Proceduralisation at all levels of governance against “Proceduralisation and its use in a post-modern legal policy?” “Are you trying to deliver something like an Anti-Ladeur.” No, neither Sisyphus nor Hercules, let alone Friedrich Engels, has inspired this essay. Its argument should rather be observed in the spirit of conflict-of-laws,i.e.of a discipline which accepts as a normative fact that different academic projects may be worthwhile despite of, or even because of, the differences of their premises and of the logics of their development, which may be inspired by complementary perceptions of a commonproblématque.

Sociological establishment of 'normative facts'

Every science is searching for 'it's facts', it's concept and categorical decree, and by this defines specific subject of it's science researching. Here, the researching is steered on identification of ontological contents of 'normative fact' in the aim of comprehension of it's categorical entity and conceptual disposition.'The normative fact' refers to importance, significance and sense which norm has, in other words, which is attributed to the norm by man and society, and which in the air of importance influence on it's behavior. Exclusive term of sociological science is 'normative fact' as behavior of an individual, groups, institutions and society with regard to establishment, application and changes of social norms.