Kriszta Kovács is a senior research fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and an associate professor at ELTE University Human Rights and Politics Department in Budapest. She is a former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, former co-president of the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice (Venice Commission, Council of Europe) and the Hungarian Constitutional Court’s former senior legal advisor. She is also a former managing editor of the CUP journal Global Constitutionalism. She has held fellowships at Columbia Law School, at the University of Trento, at the University of Birmingham and from the European Commission, the UK Foreign Office, and the Zeit Stiftung.

Current Research projects at SCRIPTS

Kriszta has been working in the project "Science Friction: Patterns, Causes and Effects of Academic Freedom Contestations" since 01 September 2021. The project brings together the disciplinary perspectives of international  relations and comparative politics with international and comparative constitutional law to analyse, assess and explain the growing contestation of academic freedom worldwide. Kriszta expects her research to contribute to the systematic evaluation of international law provisions and constitutional provisions on academic freedom. Together with Mattias Kumm, she will research the normative grounds and limits of academic freedom within the liberal tradition and relate them to international law. Furthermore, Kriszta will also prepare a comparative and theoretically informed analysis of how academic freedom is challenged in illiberal regimes (Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Turkey, European states that are ranking lowest within the Academic Freedom Index), focusing on different legal measures and political arguments made. Finally, she will contribute with an analysis of the most promising forms of resistance to uphold freedom of scientific inquiry.

Monographs and Edited Volumes

Kovács, K 2012, Az egyenlőség felé: A hátrányos megkülönböztetés tilalma és a támogató intézkedések [Towards Equality. The Non-Discrimination Clause and Affirmative Action]. L’Harmattan, Budapest

Kovács, K & Tóth, GA (eds) 2013, Lehetséges: Kis Jánosnak tanítványaitól [It is Possible. Essays in Honor of János Kis] Kalligram, Bratislava.

Book Chapters

Kovács, K & Nagy, B (forthcoming), 'In the Hand of a Populist Authoritarian', in V Stoyanova & S Smet (eds), Migrants’ Rights, Populism and Legal Resilience in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Kovács, K (forthcoming), 'The Pandemic: A Pretext for Expanding Power' in J Grogan & A Donald (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Law and the COVID-19 Pandemic, Routledge, Oxfordshire.

Kovács, K, 2020, 'Constitutional Continuity Disrupted', in M Feischmidt & B Majtényi, The Rise of Populist Nationalism, CEU Press, Budapest/New York, pp. 11-43.

Kovács, K & KL Scheppele 2019, 'The Fragility of an Independent Judiciary: Lessons from Hungary and Poland — and the European Union', in PH Solomon & K Gadowska (eds) Legal Change in Post-Communist States. Progress, Reversions, Explanations, ibidem, Stuttgart, pp. 55-96.

Kovács, K & GA Tóth 2018, 'Standing on Stilts: Philosophical Interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights', in I Motoc, P Pinto de Albuquerque & K Wojtyczek (eds) New Developments in Constitutional Law, Eleven, den Haag, pp. 239-258.

Journal Articles (peer reviewed)

Kovács, K, 2020, 'People, Sovereignty and Citizenship: The Ethnonational Populists’ Constitutional Vocabulary', Statelessness & Citizenship Review, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 389-394.

Kovács, K, 2020, 'Parliamentary Democracy by Default: Applying the European Convention on Human Rights to Presidential Elections and Referendums', Jus Cogens - A Critical Journal of Philosophy of Law and Politics, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1-22.

Kovács, K, 2020, 'Democracy in Lockdown', Social Research. An International Quarterly, In Time of Plague: The History and Lethal Consequences of Epidemic Disease, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 257-265.

Wiener, A, Dunoff, J, Havercroft, J, Kumm, M & Kovács, K, 2019, 'Global Constitutionalism as agora: Interdisciplinary encounters, cultural recognition and global diversity', Global Constitutionalism, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1-11.

Kovács, K & KL Scheppele, 2018, 'The fragility of an independent judiciary: Lessons from Hungary and Poland - and the European Union', Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 189-200.

Kovács, K, 2018, 'Human Rights Practice Review: Hungary', East European Yearbook on Human Rights, vol. 1, no. 1.

Kovács, K 2017, 'State of Exception: Springtime for the Schmittian Thoughts?', Diritto & questioni pubbliche, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 163-182.

Kovács, K, 2017, 'The Rise of Ethnocultural Constitutional Identity in the Jurisprudence of the East Central European Courts' German Law Journal, vol. 18, no. 7, pp. 1703-1720.

Kovács, K, Nagy, A & Zs Körtvélyesi 2015, 'Margins of Nationality: External Ethnic Citizenship and Non-Discrimination', Perspectives on Federalism, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 85-116.

Kovács, K & GA Tóth 2011, 'Hungary’s Constitutional Transformation', European Constitutional Law Review, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 183-203.

Kovács, K, 2011, 'Cooperative Decision-making: The Relation between Hungary and Strasbourg' International Constitutional Law Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 188-199.

Kovács, K, 2008 'Think Positive: Preferential Treatment in Hungary', Fundamentum–The Hungarian Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 46-63.