American and Western European Lessons for the Sovereignty of Hungarian Legal Development in the 19th–20th Centuries

Abstract

This paper presents research results as part of the research group on legal sovereignty. The work is built on three main pillars: the study of Western state models, the role of written and unwritten law, and the transformation of the relationship between the head of state and the people from a constitutional perspective. In conclusion, the knowledge of American constitutionalism is extremely instructive for the study of the development of the Hungarian state and law in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, as well as other Western European models (here mainly the Belgian and, to a lesser extent, the Norwegian model) have also provided experience and information. Hungarian constitutional development, although it has many similarities with Western models, has taken its own particular shape. The flexibility of the historical constitution made it possible to re-establish the constitutional order after its suspension, together with the ceremonial legitimization act of the head of state, the coronation of the king in 1867. It is fundamentally true that bottom-up reforms have always and everywhere been more successful and lasting than top-down changes, but the success of real innovations required domestic political cooperation, which was lacking at several points in the history of the Hungarian development. Accordingly, it is also true that the Hungarian legal development has been determined primarily by national characteristics and not by geographic location or Western influence let alone pressure.