The Minister has no Pardon

Immunity from Legal Liability of Members of the Government and its Models

Abstract

According to Article 35 of Act III of 1848: “The royal pardon may be exercised in respect of a minister who has been convicted only in the case of a general public pardon.” The text is taken directly from Lajos Kossuth. According to Act III of 1848, the minister shall be prosecuted by a special court established with the assistance of the bicameral Parliament. The right of individual pardon by the head of state could not be exercised in the case of an impeached minister. The same rules applied to the President of the State Audit Office. The different rules on pardoning members of the government who were held accountable were maintained in the 1918–1919 People’s Republic and the Horthy regime. After World War II, this system remained in place until the transformation of 1949. The relationship between ministerial responsibility and head of state pardons can be described on a scale, with theoretical models ranging from outright prohibition to outright permission of head of state pardons. The Hungarian structure of 1848 captures an intermediate relationship. The regulation of the countries that serve as examples for the constitutional revolution and responsible government of 1848, such as the different French and German models, the Belgian and the English regulation, also differ on this scale. From the considerable similarity of the individual legal texts, it can be concluded that the French and some German rules served as a direct example for the Hungarian rules of 1848, even if the practice differed considerably.