ACTA JURIDICA - A MTA Jogtudományi Közleményei Tom. 4 (1962)
1962 / 1-2. sz. - KOVÁCS I.: The Development of the Hungarian Constitution
The Development of the Hungarian Constitution by I. KOVÁCS Professor of the University of Szeged. Deputy-Director of the Institute of Legal and Administrative Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences This paper analyses the development of the Hungarian Constitution (Act XX of 1919) using a comparative and historical method — both de lege lata and de lege ferenda. At the same time it examines the process of the implementation of the Constitution. It starts in this respect from the interpretation of the Constitution referring to those of its provisions which hitherto have not or only partially been carried into effect or the implementation of which would require further measures. On the basis of the abstract respectively concreto (casuistic) charactcr of the method of legislation the material of legal norms contained in the Constitution is divided into three main groups: 1. social structure 2. state structure 3. provisions determining the rights and duties of citizens. Based, in part, on this classification, but also evoking the first socialist Constitutions as well the prospective results of the debates going on in the field of the socialist legal and political sciences, it considers moreover — in the perspective of the development of the Constitution — an enquiry into the extant system of regulation as well-founded. Гп the context of the issues relating to social structure (Chapters I and II of the Constitution) the necessity of certain modifications is suggested thus particularly a more discerning regulation (as compared with the wording of the Constitution now in force)regarding the class content of the State,the organizational forms of the exercise of power by the State and social bodies, the steadily more pronounced constituents of direct democracy (beyond the representative system) as well as the respective types of the consolidated categories of socialist property. Within the scope of the problems concerning State structure the significance of the amendments to Chapters III — Vll of the Constitution and those features of the development of the National Assembly, the Presidential Council of the People's Republic, the Council of Ministers and the local councils are analyzed in detail which are not dealt with in the Constitution but which because they constitute safeguards, should be entitled to find expression in the Constitution. Within the scope of the fundamental rights and duties of the citizens (Chapters VIII —IX of the Constitution) attention is drawn to the possibilities of extending the catalogue of the rights of citizens, to a more exact determination of the individual character of some particular rights and to the necessity of a more discerning constitutional enactment of the legal safeguards of the fundamental rights, in addition to their material guarantees. The development of the Hungarian Constitution embraces a very significant historical period. It was enacted in a period when Hungary, in the course of a relatively peaceful development towards a people's democracy had already firmly taken to the road leading to the building of socialism. We were — with the exception of the Constitution of the Polish People's Democracy — the latest of the European People's Democracies as regards the enactment of a socialist Constitution.1 This involved the possibility of taking into consideration in 1 Constitutions of a socialist type had been enacted prior to 18th August, 1949 by the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (January 31, 1946), the Albanian People's Republic (March 14, 1946), the Bulgarian People's Republic (December 4. 1947), the I Acta Jurldiea TV/1—2.