Justifiable Defence: A Comparison of Polish and Hungarian Solutions with an Outlook on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The main question which this article seeks to answer is what justifies justifiable defence in substantive criminal law; what is the main reason for the existence of this exclusion of criminal liability? The focal notion of this paper is a presumption, according to which the justifications for the existence of justifiable defence are mostly self-preservation and natural law. We choose to compare the Polish and Hungarian solutions because of the historical and social similarities between Poland and Hungary (particularly in terms of the post-socialist characters of these countries) and the fact that, at least according to the present authors, the question of the justification of this legal institution was, arguably partially, resolved in Hungarian law. Finally, according to the COVID-19 pandemic that arose in 2020, we will observe in a separate chapter whether criminal liability would be excluded by justifiable defence in any cases of transmission of coronavirus.