Biography
Zoltán Szente is a Research Professor at the Institute for Legal Studies of the Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest. Since the mid-1990s, he has been a member (since 2013 the Vice-Chairman) of the Group of Independent Experts (for monitoring local and regional democracy), Council of Europe. Professor Szente is a co-founder of the Research Group on Constitutional Interpretation of the International Association of Constitutional Law. He has published widely on Hungarian and comparative constitutional law, constitutional theory, parliamentary law, local government and European constitutional history in Hungarian, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Croatian. Among his recent publications are New Challenges to Constitutional Adjudication in Europe: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge, London and New York, 2018, co-edited with Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz), ‘Stepping Into the Same River Twice? Judicial Independence in Old and New Authoritarianism’, GERMAN LAW JOURNAL 22(7) 2021, ‘The Twilight of Parliament: Parliamentary Law and Practice in Hungary in Populist Times, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PARLIAMENTARY STUDIES 1(1) 2021; Populist Challenges to Constitutional Interpretation in Europe and Beyond (Routledge, London and New York, 2021, co-edited with Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz); ‘Using Emergency Powers in Hungary: Against the Pandemic and/or Democracy?’, in Matthias, C Kettemann; Konrad, Lachmayer, Pandemocracy in Europe : Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID-19 (Hart, 2022) (co-author: Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz), ‘Constitutional Changes in Populist Times’, REVIEW OF CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPEAN LAW 47(1) 2022, ‘Constitutional Effects of Populism in EU Member States, 2010–2020’, in Castellà Andreu, Josep Maria and Simonelli, Marco Antonio, Populism and Contemporary Democracy in Europe: Old Problems and New Challenges (Palgrave Macmillan 2022) (co-author: Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz), ‘The impact of populism on constitutional interpretation in the EU Member States’, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 26(1) 2022 (co-author: Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz); ‘How Not to Use History in Constitutional Interpretation: The Aborted Resurrection of the Historical Constitution in Hungary’, in Francesco Biagi, Justin O. Frosini and Jason Mazzone (eds.), Comparative Constitutional History: Uses of History in Constitutional Adjudication (Brill, 2022), ‘From guarding the constitution to serving politics – the decline of the Hungarian Constitutional Court’, in Miroslaw Granat (ed.) Constitutionality of Law without a Constitutional Court A View from Europe (Routledge, 2023); ‘The myth of populist constitutionalism in Hungary and Poland: Populist or authoritarian constitutionalism?’ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 21(1) 2023; Constitutional Law in Hungary (Wolters Kluwer, 2023, forthcoming).