ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, Polish and Hungarian political and legal actors have made a concerted effort to undermine liberal democracy and liberal constitutionalism. They have used the same liberal language of rights and equality as their countries’ early leaders during the initial transition to liberal democracy after 1989/1990. But in keeping with the concept of Far-Right Newspeak, they have modified the meaning of individual rights and equality and hollowed out the terms’ content. Their goals are also different. The description of institutions and formulation of rights—especially the right to equality—of Poland’s and Hungary’s new constitutions after 1989/1990 had great potential for securing liberal democracy, especially in providing room for legal modifications to keep up with shifts in both social and constitutional culture. However, illiberal constitutionalism, as it has been practiced in both countries over the last decade, has had the opposite goal. Illiberal constitutionalism strives to foreclose the possibility of adapting the law to the evolution of social norms. Its goal is primarily to keep incumbents in power and thereby engineer social change. This chapter will illustrate this transition with examples of two cases: the right to bodily autonomy and the rights and equality of LGBTQIA+ people. We show how political and legal actors have narrowed down the meaning of individual rights and equality through exclusion and how they succeeded in making these changes by an excessive emphasis on majoritarian politics and social homogeneity.
