CONSTAD

CONSTAD (Political Concepts in Constitutional Adjudication: A Paired Comparison of Hungary and Slovakia) studies whether and how pre-conceptions of ‘politics’ shape constitutional court reasoning concerning key constitutional values in light of the impact of these institutions on political regimes. At a conceptual level, CONSTAD recognizes the multiple conceptions of ‘politics’ in discourses on constitutional adjudication beyond the state of art on the ‘essentially contested’ character of constitutional values. Empirically, CONSTAD offers a paired comparison of two formally powerful Central European constitutional courts which have operated under changing regime conditions: Hungary and Slovakia. Building on existing socio-legal research, it offers a novel multi-method approach and collects original empirical data to trace the conceptions of constitutional values in key outputs of constitutional courts and the key elite constitutional actors surrounding and engaging with them. Thus, it sheds light on the globally understudied case of Slovakia and offers novel insights on the globally followed Hungarian case, while advocating the use of socio-legal methods and bringing them in dialogue with doctrinal research and behavioral models of judicial decision making, the former predominant in traditional legal and the latter in traditional political science research of post-communist courts. The findings of CONSTAD anticipate to raise global awareness on the importance of the implications of diverging conceptualizations of politics on the optimal ‘political’ role of constitutional courts and their democratic performance, thus prompting further research beyond centralized European constitutional courts. This is facilitated by a range of training and networking initiatives intended to support internationally competitive socio-legal research in and on Slovakia. 

Funded by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (project No. APVV-24-0238).

Research team (as of 1 November 2025):

• JUDr. Peter Čuroš, PhD. 
• Rebeka Kiss, M.A.
• doc. Mgr. Erik Láštic, PhD. 
• prof. PhDr. Darina Malová, PhD. 
• Samuel Spáč, M.A., PhD.
• Max Steuer, M.A., LL.M., PhD. (principal investigator)
• prof. Mgr. Marián Zouhar, PhD. 

External research collaborator:

• prof. Dr. Zoltán Szente, DSc.

Project assistant:

• Anjali Sirohi, M.A., LL.M.