Finkey officialitás-elméletének hatása a magyar büntetőeljárásra
The Effects of Ferenc Finkey’s Principle of Officiality on the Hungarian Criminal Procedure

Summary/Abstract: There has been a lot of controversy among the Hungarian jurisprudence regarding the creation of the new Hungarian Criminal Procedure Act. It was also raised whether there was a need for a new code of procedure at all, whether it was not enough to adapt the existing regulations of the old Criminal Procedure Act to the new Criminal Code.The Criminal Procedure Act, which has been in force since July 1 2018, may seem a distant start compared to Ferenc Finkey's work, but we will see that knowledge of the legal history and the processes involved are essential to understanding the changes in the present.This is specially true for changes that affect the principles on which criminal proceedings are based. One of the biggest changes in the new Criminal Procedure Code – at the level of the priciples – is undoubtedly the relegation of the principle of official proceedings to the background, as it often turns to opportunism rather than officiality in order to increase simplification and efficiency.In fact, in his work, Finkey has already perfectly described the mechanisms that we can discover in today’s changes. Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that his work may have provided a basis for fundamental changes in the new Criminal Procedure Code. His theories presented in this study shed excellent light on the dynamics that have permeated all areas of legal history in law and on the processes that, if we recognize them help us understand why it is necessary for our laws to be recreated sometimes.All in all, we can see that the principles are never of absolute value, but their meaning is constantly changing, as the legislatorial ways breath in the spirit of the current age. When these principles are no longer able to keep up with change, they must be re-formed. And if we are to form such an important principle, we need to enforce a new vision throughout criminal proceedings that makes it necessary not only to make amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure but also to create a whole new law.In order to see the real effects of the present innovations and the actual processes it has initiated in our criminal procedural law, a comprehensive analysis of the practice will be needed. We need to examine how quickly law enforcement can respond to the loss of space in centuries-old traditions. It may also be a question of whether we can talk about a real loss of space at all, as it is also conceivable that the principle of officiality has narrowed at the level of the normative text, but the old routine, attitude, and instincts live on in the application of law. The outcome of this examination may also raise important questions, including legal certainty. It is essential that once our procedural law has reached the point where it had to be born again, the application of the law be reborn with it.

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