Gábor Halmai, Ágnes Kovács. “All Quiet in the Judiciary: Low Voice of Hungarian Judges and the Role of European Courts.” In Freedom of Expression of Judges: European and National Perspectives. Edited by Federica Casaroca, Mohor Fajdiga, and Madalina Moraru, pp. 79-100. London: Routledge, 2025.
Summary: Hungary has received international attention in recent years for being the first fully consolidated democracy to turn into an autocracy. Neither domestic checks and balances, such as an independent judiciary, nor transnational institutions, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, have been able to intercept the process, and by now autocratisation has reached a level where resistance is less and less effective. Since 2010, the government has been putting constant political pressure on courts, and most recently even court executives have taken various steps to silence judges critical of some elements of the legal system or the current form of court administration. All these seriously discourage judges from making extrajudicial statements in matters related to the rule of law and judicial independence. On the one hand, the chapter deals with judges exercising their right to freedom of expression as a rare form of resistance against the autocratic government of Hungary ever since 2010. On the other hand, the chapter also discusses the responsibility of the European institutions when responding to the violations of the freedom of expression of judges and to the dismantlement of judicial independence more generally.