Is the Hungarian Legal System Converging to a Case Law System? Results of a Computer-Based Citation Analysis of Hungarian Judicial Decisions

Ződi, Zsolt (2014) Is the Hungarian Legal System Converging to a Case Law System? Results of a Computer-Based Citation Analysis of Hungarian Judicial Decisions. REVIEW OF CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPEAN LAW. ISSN 0925-9880

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Abstract

It is one of the most popular leitmotifs in comparative legal science that civil and common legal systems are converging. The primary consideration behind this is that the role of “precedents” are increasing in civil legal systems, while statutory law’s importance is growing in common law jurisdictions. In 2012 a group of lawyers and IT experts made a research on a database of Hungarian judicial decisions in order to explore the citation patterns to previous judicial decisions. The article shows the quantitative, and the qualitative results of the research. It argues that, though the number of citations to previous cases in certain fields is surprisingly high, and it is increasing, the structure and the context of the judicial reasoning is still formalistic, and statute-centered.

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