ABSTRACT
While it is widely accepted that the recent democratic decline in Hungary can be traced back to many factors (e.g., political, social, economic, etc.), it may be worthwhile to focus on and analyse one of them in particular: the fact that the dominance of the liberal discourse on the law between 1990 and 2010 led to jurists, democratic politicians, and other intellectuals becoming exposed to the attacks of neo-authoritarian forces. In this chapter, I examine one of the characteristics of the liberal theory of law which facilitated the spread of a conviction among democratically thinking people with an interest in public affairs. This conviction is based on the assumption that there is a sharp boundary between law and politics, and following from that, that neutral legal institutions, by relying solely on the law, are able to defend the rights of the citizens against any political attack. Believing in this myth, democrats did not appreciate the true weight of the political nature of legal decision making, and the undemocratic forces were able to capitalise on their naïvety.
