Mátyás Bencze

56940554200

Publications - 4

The Resilience of the Hungarian Court System Between 2012 and 2020

Mátyás Bencze

Publication Name: European Union and Its Neighbours in A Globalized World

Publication Date: 2025-01-01

Volume: 16

Issue: Unknown

Page Range: 161-176

Description:

In this chapter, I will first outline the political challenges the Hungarian court system has faced since 2010 and also present the characteristics of the organizational setting of the administration of justice, which has been a decisive factor in the response to those challenges. I will then turn to a discussion of how the relationship between the political system and the courts has changed since 2010. Using statistical methods and content analysis, I will prove the hypothesis that sporadic governmental expressions of opinion on certain judicial decisions before 2010 have been replaced by the systematic assertion of the interests of political power in public communication to the courts since the change of government in 2010. I will then describe the reactions of the domestic judicial leadership and use content analysis to identify the extent and nature of the reactions and how the strength of the resistance has changed over time. Finally, I draw conclusions about the factors that influence the preservation of the resilience of the judiciary.

Open Access: Yes

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-70451-2_10

‘Law Is Not Politics’: The Role of the Liberal View on Law in the Rise of “New Populism”

Mátyás Bencze

Publication Name: Law Populism and the Political in Central and Eastern Europe

Publication Date: 2023-01-01

Volume: Unknown

Issue: Unknown

Page Range: 166-183

Description:

While it is widely accepted that the recent democratic decline in Hungary can be traced back to many factors (e.g., political, social, economic, etc.), it may be worthwhile to focus on and analyse one of them in particular: the fact that the dominance of the liberal discourse on the law between 1990 and 2010 led to jurists, democratic politicians, and other intellectuals becoming exposed to the attacks of neo-authoritarian forces. In this chapter, I examine one of the characteristics of the liberal theory of law which facilitated the spread of a conviction among democratically thinking people with an interest in public affairs. This conviction is based on the assumption that there is a sharp boundary between law and politics, and following from that, that neutral legal institutions, by relying solely on the law, are able to defend the rights of the citizens against any political attack. Believing in this myth, democrats did not appreciate the true weight of the political nature of legal decision making, and the undemocratic forces were able to capitalise on their naïvety.

Open Access: Yes

DOI: 10.4324/9781032624464-8

'Everyday Judicial Populism' in Hungary

Mátyás Bencze

Publication Name: Review of Central and East European Law

Publication Date: 2022-01-01

Volume: 47

Issue: 1

Page Range: 37-59

Description:

Scholarly works on judicial populism tend to concentrate on the landmark judgments of constitutional courts and apex courts. Nonetheless, the examination of the activities of ordinary courts is of great importance as they shape the lives of citizens and can strengthen or curb populist politics. In this paper I analyze a phenomenon emerging in the adjudication of Hungarian ordinary courts which can be labelled 'everyday judicial populism'. Based on case studies and empirical scrutiny I argue that the political populism of the Hungarian government has both a direct and an indirect, but clearly detectable, impact on judicial practice. As regards the latter, the government can manipulate (through its media) public opinion in certain court cases, and judges take this opinion - as the 'vox populi' - into consideration in their decision-making. At the end of the paper I examine the institutional conditions that have facilitated the emergence of judicial populism. 2022

Open Access: Yes

DOI: 10.1163/15730352-bja10062

In the name of the people? The populist style of judicial reasoning and justificatory formalism

Mátyás Bencze

Publication Name: Hungarian Journal of Legal Studies

Publication Date: 2026-01-01

Volume: Unknown

Issue: Unknown

Page Range: Unknown

Description:

The populist political strategy has become a worldwide phenomenon among those in the executive and legislative branches of government. It is therefore justified to scrutinize whether populism influences the third branch of power, and if so, how. In the first instance, this research project will explore the characteristics of populist judicial reasoning in order to identify populist judgements. The results can be used to determine the extent to which populist judicial practice is widespread in a given legal system. First, I distinguish between three types of populist judicial behaviour. Judicial populism can manifest in the content of the decision (‘decisional’), in the court's communication (‘rhetorical’), or in both (‘full-fledged’). I then present the patterns of reasoning that can indicate populist judicial behaviour in each manifestation of judicial populism. Finally, I will address the question of how a variant of judicial formalism, which I term ‘justificatory formalism’, contributes to the spread of ‘decisional’ judicial populism.

Open Access: Yes

DOI: 10.1556/2052.2025.00635