The Uncertain Concept of Legal Certainty
Rule of Law, Criminal Law and the Hungarian Constitutional Court
Abstract
Hungarian legal scholarship is dominated by a formal, “technical” conception of the rule of law and this is even truer in the jurisprudence of criminal law. This fact can be demonstrated by analysing the case-law of the Hungarian Constitutional Court with regard to the constitutional review of judicial decisions and criminal statutes. In constitutional complaint proceedings the Constitutional Court has ruled out legal certainty issues from the review of legal norms and judicial decisions by stating that legal certainty is not a value of constitutional importance and does not raise human rights issues. In this paper the author argues for the claim that conceiving the principle of the rule of law and legal certainty as a formal and technical value which is isolated from the principles of political morality, can lead to a narrow and weak protection of human rights. If the rule of law and legal certainty issues are regarded as amoral values, (criminal) norms can become servants of political interests where highly unjust laws can be held to be constitutional.
Keywords
legal certainty | criminal law | vagueness of law | nullum crimen sine lege | Constitutional Court of Hungary | constitutional review of criminal norms | Rechtssicherheit | Strafrecht | Unbestimmtheit des Rechts | nullum crimen sine lege | ungarisches Verfassungsgericht | verfassungsrechtliche Prüfung von Strafrechtsnormen