CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Matits, Kornel |
|---|---|
| Title | Tracing the limits of secret surveillance. The essential content doctrine`s role in setting absolute limitation on the surveillance power of the state in Hungary and in Germany |
| Summary | This paper starts with an analysis of the “concept of the human being” (Menschenbild) in Hungary and in Germany. It identifies the problems in Hungarian constitutional law and as a special field, secret surveillance law. It argues the Hungarian Fundamental Law’s miscellaneous nature can justify even a paternalistic position of the state towards individuals. However, the Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) did not go that far: it deduced its own Menschenbild from the Fundamental Law that can be categorized as communitarian. That Menschenbild is almost word-by-word the same as the one that emerged from the jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) decades ago, although the HCC used the concept to justify harsher human rights limitations. The thesis then considers the application of the essential content doctrine as a possible solution to the problem identified. According to this doctrine, all human rights have a core area which deserves absolute protection. In its jurisprudence on secret surveillance the FCC protects the core area of private life comprehensively. I demonstrate the way and the extent of this protection and suggest the HCC to start the elaboration of a substantial human rights guarantee in the field of secret surveillance by using the German example of the essential content doctrine. I argue that there should be some most intimate places, situations, conversations in private life from where a constitutional state is completely excluded even when carrying out secret surveillance. |
| Supervisor | Blankenagel, Alexander |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/matits_kornel.pdf |
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