HUN-2009-3-007
a)  Hungary / b)  Constitutional Court / c) / d)  16-12-2009 / e)  121/2009 / f) / g)  Magyar Közlöny (Official Gazette), 2009/184 / h) .
 
Keywords of the systematic thesaurus:
 
 
Constitutional Justice - Jurisdiction - The subject of review - Laws and other rules having the force of law.
General Principles - Rule of law.
General Principles - Certainty of the law.
Institutions - Legislative bodies - Law-making procedure.
 
Keywords of the alphabetical index:
 
Law, version in force, determination / Law, partial annulment, remainder, enforceability.
 
Headnotes:
 
Act XI of 1987 on the order of legislation, which defines how legislation should be drawn up and regulated, was repealed on the basis that Parliament had failed to bring the Act into line with the Constitution.
 
Summary:
 
I. Several petitioners, including the Ombudsman for Civil Rights, a Member of Parliament and various law professors filed petitions with the Court requesting the repeal of the whole Act XI of 1987 on the order of legislation.II. The Court began with an examination of the consolidated version of the Act in force. The Act had been "re-gazetted" in its entirety in Official Gazette no. 2007/106. However, the Court could not treat it as the Act currently in force, as the "re-gazetted" text contained provisions that were no longer in force. Nonetheless, the text as it appeared in the Official Gazette was the basis of the constitutional review.
 
The Court noted that several parts of the Act were constitutionally compliant. However, those paragraphs left intact after the removal of the unconstitutional parts would no longer constitute an interpretable and enforceable law. The Court accordingly ordered the full, but not immediate revocation of the law. Parliament was charged with drafting and enacting a new Act on the order of legislation by 31 December.
 
Justice Trocsanyi attached a concurring opinion to the judgment in which he emphasised that the Court itself should have determined the text of the Act currently in force, and that it should have annulled the Act with effect from the date of publication of this decision.
 
Languages:
 
Hungarian.