Attitudinal Model Applied to the Hungarian Constitutional Court. A Refined Analysis of Judicial Behavior from 1990 to 2015

Although there are few studies (Szente 2016; Halmai 2015) which tried to apply the attitudinal model of judicial behavior in Hungarian context, the scope of this projects haven’t been expanded to the time period between 1990 and 2010. The JUDICON research project (Pócza et al. 2017) collected not only data on judicial rulings but also data on parliamentary voting behavior of Hungarian MPs. Connecting the two datasets will allow us to apply the attitudinal model of judicial behavior to the practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court. Since the dataset of the JUDICON project transcends the binary approach of analyzing constitutional/unconstitutional decisions, we will be able to find out how far judges followed the policy and value preferences of their nominating parties. We do not simply respond to the question of the attitudinal model with a simple yes or no, but we can also determine judges’ relative proximity to their respective nominating parties. By taking only politically relevant decisions into account will also able detect whether judges took decisions in a tricky way. Research might , uncover judges’ possible strategies in taking strong rulings against (politically) less important legal regulations adopted by their respective nominating party and against (politically) more important regulations of the opposing side, while being more permissive against (politically) more important legislative regulations adopted by their nominating party and against (politically) less important regulations adopted by the other side.