Adopted in 1993 on a nearly all-embracing consensus under the MDF government, the Police Act had since then come under criticism by a number of independent commentators and advocacy groups on account of the broad powers it conferred upon the police that seemed hardly defensible in a genuine constitutional democracy. In fact, several motions for a constitutional review were filed. However, the most important questions of principle–notably the scope of means ideally granted to the police and other enforcement agencies vis a vis citizens in a constitutional democracy, and the terms under which they are allowed to avail themselves of those means–have gone unanswered by the Court in the past decade. One of the key issues here is that of the use of firearms: Under what circumstances, and against what subjects, should it be permissible for a police officer to resort to his weapon, ad absurdum taking a fellow human being’s life?
The paper is available on our Hungarian site.
