Kivételesből kötelező - a törvények preambulumának empirikus vizsgálata, különös tekintettel a jogalkotási törvény 2024. évi módosítására

The 2024 amendment to the Act on Law-Making made the preamble a mandatory element of all legislation and required that the legislative purpose be defined therein. This study examines whether this paradigm shift has brought about substantive change in practice by analysing the preamble practice of acts promulgated between 1990 and 2022, subjecting the preambles of acts promulgated in 2025 to a paragraph-level content analysis, and examining the teleological interpretation practice in the Curia's reported judicial decisions. The amendment formally achieved its objective; in substantive terms, however, the preamble did not add independent value relative to the explanatory note in the majority of cases (58%), being either a paraphrase or a verbatim copy thereof. The analysis of judicial practice did not support the legislator's assumption underlying the amendment: the primary instrument of subjective teleological interpretation throughout the period examined was consistently the explanatory note, not the preamble. The study concludes that making the preamble mandatory does not in itself guarantee meaningful purpose-setting; its quality depends not on formal requirements but on whether the legislator genuinely devotes attention to the substantive articulation of the legislative purpose during the preparatory process.