© Horváth Szabolcs

Maybe now is the time for you to give the speech you meant to give at the Hungarian Legal Forum in Balatonfured about the need to continue legal reform. Supposedly, the organisers withdrew your invitation. What reason did they give?

My suspicion is that it was my proposed plenary address that caused problems, not my person. Many were unhappy that I, an outsider, had the effrontery to look at the inner workings and internal affairs of the justice system. I wanted to talk about problems that had arisen as a result of the 1997 reform of the justice system. I wasn't calling for revolutionary changes. I wanted to talk about the need for minor changes to certain aspects of our existing court system.

Can the inner workings of the third branch of government be considered internal affairs in a democratic state?

In healthy societies, where self-defensive, corporatist structures have not emerged, it is inevitable that the system of justice is open to criticism. However, Hungarian courts are reluctant to hear criticism, not just of their structure, but also of their rulings. Judges are simply not used to people analysing trends in rulings in certain areas of the law. Lawyers and legal scholars have thus far failed to make it clear that criticism has a constitutional purpose. For example, in order to establish whether the principle of equality before the law is working in practice, you have to conduct comparisons of judgements.

But it's not just the courts. The Medgyessy government passed laws that made it impossible for the press even to get hold of written verdicts.

There has been a curious alliance of interests in the Hungarian legal profession for many years now. Leading court officers and the lawyers together constitute a powerful lobby. This could hardly be prevented. But it is more surprising that this lobby has a decisive influence on the way laws are written.

You appear to be suggesting that a lawyer-justice minister like Peter Barandy had a common interest with many judges in keeping information about the daily workings of the courts system from the press.

I make no such assumption about the previous minister for justice. But I have seen that there is what you might delicately call a consensus on how transparent the legal system should be. Judges who think they should be open to criticism are very much in a minority.

There was once a group of young reforming judges. Why have they become so much less prominent?

There was indeed a time when things changed faster. The judges' revolution started with a demand for increased pay. I don't wish to be cynical. Several well-known members of the Judges' Group played an important role in the development of our court system. I don't know why they've disappeared. One of the major mistakes of the reforms was that the judges saw their only 'enemy' as the executive. They all forgot that county court presidents also play a very important role in the legal hierarchy. The middle managers. And even before 1989, they had close relationships with the county Communist Party Committee, with the secretary of the City Committee and with the county chief prosecutor. And even if the people changed, the reforms of 1997 left this important post unchanged. Further, many of these county court presidents were elected onto the National Justice Council. This created the curious situation where county court presidents were responsible for policing themselves.