Essays of Faculty of Law University of Pécs Yearbook of 2015

(...) Many requirements, basic principles and expectations are expressed towards the public administration of democratic states, but it is a key issue that public administration must work properly and fulfil its functions for those who get in touch with it (primarily clients) in a satisfactory manner. The same concept is revealed in Zoltán Magyary’s statement that public administration must operate in a way that “parties, whose rights or interests are affected by the operation of public administration, should not find mistakes in it; moreover, they should not be afraid of mistakes or presume the existence of such”. It does not need further clarification that it is the legal remedy system of public administrative proceedings that serves the elimination of clients’ mistrust towards public administration offices and the correction of potential mistakes. Magyary’s other statement that “the rule of law endeavoured to protect the individual against public administration as much as possible ” is also correct; therefore the methods of public administrative legal remedies are constantly in change. Since the currently ongoing recodification of public administrative proceedings in Hungary aims to put the system of legal remedies in public administration on a new basis, l wish to discuss the most important conceptual changes here. Keywords rule of law, Fundamental Law of Hungary, public administration, legality, administrative court. The principle of the rule of law, in its most widely accepted sense, means the primacy of law over the functioning of a state and, in particular, that in a constitutional state “the law provides scope and fonn for exercising the state’s powers”. The rule of law in the modern sense evolved in the process of political and social changes, and it appeared as a concept of law imposing restrictions on the state in the late 18th century. Without going into a detailed discussion of the matter, I agree with the view that the concept, and the appearance, of the rule of law can be considered as the outcome of a long process, rather than associated with a given moment in history. First, what is called the liberal concept of the rule of law emerged, fundamentally formulating the need to build up such state structures that are based on the protection of citizens against the state and on the limitation on state intervention. The concept of the rule of law can be construed both in formal and material terms.