Constitutional rights: Horizontal effect and antidiscrimination law in Hungary

Gárdos-Orosz, Fruzsina (2008) Constitutional rights: Horizontal effect and antidiscrimination law in Hungary. Acta Juridica Hungarica, 49 (1). pp. 111-136. ISSN 1216-2574

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Abstract

This contribution aims to examine how the Hungarian Constitution applies in private relations through judicial activity and how the anti-discrimination legislation influences this tendency. The current codification procedure of the new civil code calls for a thorough theoretical background in order to answer how its provisions relate to the Constitution. After the general overview of the practice of courts and the Constitutional Court, the criticism of scholars developed on the issue will shed light on the weaknesses, but in spite of them, the overall success of the theory of indirect horizontal effect. The paper will also deal with the horizontal effect of a specific constitutional right, namely the right to equal treatment. I examine the fairly new legal instrument, the act on the prohibition of certain forms of discrimination, and demonstrate how this new practice influences the idea of horizontal effect in constitutional law and what implications it has on the new Civil Code afoot. I argue that the act at first sight exists independently from the requirement of horizontal application of fundamental rights, but, in fact, it implicates the necessity to reconsider in its light how the Constitution applies in private relations.

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