The paper investigates three phases in the activity of the Hungarian Constitutional Court through an analysis of dissenting opinions in politically relevant cases. Dissenting opinions reveal judicial behavior which, according to the attitudinal model, might be linked to the political position of the parties that nominated the judges. Beyond examining individual decision-making, the article applies network-analysis to identify whether patterns in dissenting opinions might be differentiated according to political positions and a left-right partition. According to our findings, political blocs did not emerge and become dominant after 2010; rather, this phenomenon was already present during the second phase of the Court (1999–2010) as the judges could be differentiated along the political positions they adopted in their dissenting opinions. During the third phase (2010–2018), the network of judges proved to be less polarized, and a separation between old and new judges also emerged.
Our 2020 Annual Conference was scheduled to be held at the University of Wrocław in Poland on July 9-11, 2020.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICON·S Executive Committee has decided to postpone our 2020 Conference to 2021. Our next Annual Conference will take place from July 8-10, 2021, in Wrocław, Poland.
Procedural details regarding the organization of the 2021 Conference will follow in the months ahead.
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