01.25.2021.
Professor Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo's College of Law retired in 2020. To commemorate his decades-long dedication to legal education, the Toledo College of Law organized a full day long conference. Several faculty members of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences were also generously invited to talk at the event.
Professor Attila Badó and Associate Professor Péter Mezei have introduced the first experiences related to the limited precedent system of Hungary. The new statute of last year requires Hungarian courts to expressly consider in their judgments not only statutes but also the interpretation of the highest court, the Curia. These will be precedents in the sense that lower courts will only be allowed to deviate from them if they expressly justify their reasons for doing so. Márton Sulyok was also invited to Professor Davis' farewell conference. Associate Professor Sulyok has discussed the agency model of human rights protection in the European Union. As the US also applies agencies with a fundamental rights focus (e.g. USAID), so does the European Union – as decentralized institutions, each placed in a different Member State. The Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), operating from Vienna, tries to make sense of the multi-layered regulation of human rights protection with a focus on MS’ practices. The lecture touched upon the institution, its responsibilities and activities (monitoring and data collection, communication with Member States, advice and guidance to EU decision-makers), as well as the importance and compilation of the Fundamental Rights Report, similar in purpose to the US Commission’s Report on Unalienable Right.
