The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

the E.U. Member States (Deventer: Kluwer, 2014), 775–9.

10 

L. Garlicki, “Democracy and International Influences,” in G. Nolte (ed.) European and U.S. 

Constitutionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 264.

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545

of the members of the one-chamber legislative body. Neither a referendum, 

nor any other form of ratification (e.g., approval by the subsequent parlia-

ment) was required for the adoption of a new constitution or a constitutional 

amendment. However, the increasingly hostile political environment and the 

divergent, often diffuse constitutional conceptions prevented a consensus, or 

even compromises on a formally new constitution.

11

19.2.  Reading the 1989 Constitution: An 

Unprecedented Judicial Venture

Judicial protection of the Constitution was also closer to the centralized 

German model than to the United States judicial review.

12

 This meant that 

the Constitutional Court was institutionally separated from the ordinary court 

system and had unique, erga omnes constitutional interpretative authority. 

One of the main reasons for this was that the transition was characterized by 

a deep mistrust of the judiciary among the new elites and the masses, as it was 

considered to be a means of oppression from the previous regime.

13

As member of the third generation of European constitutional courts, the 

Hungarian institution embodied how modern constitutional practice emerges 

from democratic change.

14

 Famously, the Austrian, German, and Italian con-

stitutional courts were (re)established after the fall of totalitarian regimes, in 

the late 1940s and the early 1950s, then the Spanish and Portuguese courts 

were set up after the fall of the regimes of Franco and Salazar in the late 1970s; 

these were followed by the constitutional courts of post-Soviet democracies, 

11 

A. Arato, “The Constitution-Making Endgame in Hungary” (1996) 4 East European Constitu-

tional Review 31.

12 

From a theoretical and critical point of view, see W. Sadurski, Rights before Courts: A Study 

of Constitutional Courts in Post-Communist States of Central and Eastern Europe (Dordrecht: 

Springer, 2005). See also H. Schwartz, The Struggle for Constitutional Justice in Post-Communist  

Europe (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

13 

A. Sajó, “Contemporary Problems of the Judiciary in Hungary,” in K. Rokumoto (ed.) The 

Social Role of the Legal Profession (Tokyo:  International Centre for Comparative Law and 

Politics, University of Tokyo, 1993).

14 

Originally, Favoreau distinguished “three waves” of constitutional justice, starting with the 

Austrian and Czechoslovak constitutional courts from the 1920s, then the re-establishment 

of the Austrian court together with setting up the German court, finally, the Spanish, Portu-

guese, and East-Central European courts: Louis Favoreu, Les Cours Constitutionnelles (Paris: 

Presses Universitaires de France, 1986). See also L. Favoreu and W. Mastor, Les cours consti-

tutionnelles. Connaissance du droit (Paris: Dalloz, 2011). As for the first three generations of 

constitutional courts, see L. Sólyom, “The Role of Constitutional Courts in the Transition of 

Democracy: with Special Reference to Hungary” (2003) 18 International Sociology 133.

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546