Liberális közvélemény és büntetőjog a reformkori Magyarországon
Public opinion and criminal law in Hungary during the Reform Era

Summary/Abstract: Despite the difference between the concepts of the Reform Era in common history and in legal history, the appearance of the ideas of material criminal law in public opinion can be examined comprehensively from the emergence of public opinion in the modern sense, i.e. from the early 1830s and 1840s only. During the Reform Era, issues of material criminal law were raised in Hungary on public feudal forums (county assembly, national diet) as well as on civil forums (associations, press). On feudal forums, such issues were raised in connection with criminal codification only, county assemblies facing criminal law for the first time in 1929, during the debate of the draft of the criminal code, the national diet discussing the modern proposal in 1843 only. In fact, it was during the debate of this proposal that the views present in the era manifested themselves most. Within material law, the transformation of the penal system was regarded as most important. There was a debate over the abolishment of two, nearly exclusive kinds of penalties in feudal criminal law, i.e. corporal punishment and the capital punishment, and there were differences of opinion concerning the extent of the penal authority of the state.Particular issues were random discussed, and even then the amount of punishment and the deficiencies of terminology were the issues. Of the modern forums of publicity, associations cannot be examined, but the press can provide a number of interesting facts. The first golden age of penal literature can be dated to the last decade of the Reform Era, modern press coming into being by the early 1840s. Articles appeared on legal principals of criminal law and on particular cases, but most publications were writings on the system of sanctions. There was a consensus in the professional and the political press about the abolishing of corporal punishments, but the issue of the death penalty divided the authors. Public opinion appearing in feudal forums of publicity and in modern means of communication regarded punishments as most important within material criminal law. This increased interest in sanctions, on the basis of researches so far, ran in parallel with the changes in sentencing practices.

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