About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

46 Acta Jur. Hng. 1 (2005)

handle is hein.journals/ajur46 and id is 1 raw text is: 















1216-2574 / USD 20.00                                        ACTA  JURIDICA  HUNGARICA
@ 2005 Akadimiai  Kiadd, Budapest                             46, Nos 1-2, pp. 1-11 (2005)



CSABA VARGA*


Rule of Law between the Scylla of Imported Patterns and

the   Charybdis of Actual Realisation

(The Experience   of Lithuania)


    Abstract. Nations of Central and Eastern Europe in the near past have all faced the same
    dilemma: how  can they manage international encouragement to adopt atlantic patterns in
    promise of ready-made routes with immediate success, in a way also promoting the paths of
    organic development, relying on own resources and potentialities that can only be gained from
    tradition? Or, otherwise speaking, is it feasible at all to rush forward by rapidly learning all the
    responses others elaborated elsewhere at a past time? Or are they expected themselves to
    become Sisyphus bearing his own way, at the price of suffering and bitter disillusionment? The
    question was not raised by each country individually in the region as not much time was left
    for pondering in the rapid drift of events. Anyhow, cost-free solutions adopted from without
    may  easily lead to adverse results, far away from expectations for the time being. The
    principles of free market, democracy and parliamentarism-with rule of law and human rights
    in the background-are usually believed to offer a kind of panacea curing the basic ills in the
    contemporary world. Generalised experience notwithstanding, social science has to be given
    the chance to record-if found so-that the same staff may not work at some places where it has
    just recently been transplanted as it is used to work amidst its natural surrounding in the
    western hemisphera, not with the same cost/benefit ratio at the least. For that reason,
    scholarship in Central and Eastern Europe is growingly aware of the fact that what it can
    provide is by far not marginal feedback but the very first testing and teasing proof on social
    embeddedness  of some ideas and ideals, deservedly fundamental for the atlantic world.
    Realistically speaking, not even western social development is separable from the economic
    reserves of the development actually run. Or, operation of any societal complexity requires
    resources in both social organisation and material production.

    Keywords:  transition, rule of law, Lithuania, open society, social balance, ius and lex,
    rights and duties


Having recovered from the trauma of surviving Soviet imperial socialism
and  compelled to open up new ways in independent state-building in parallel
with  the  readjustment   of  what  is left as local  legal  arrangement to common
European standards, nations of Central and Eastern Europe all have faced the

    * Scientific Adviser, Institute for Legal Studies, Hungarian Academy  of Sciences, H-

1250 Budapest, P. 0. Box 25; Professor, Director of the Institute for Legal Philosophy of the
Pdzmdny  P6ter Catholic University of Hungary, H-1428  Budapest  8, P. 0. Box 6.
E-mail: varga@jak.ppke.hu

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most