Equality: The Missing Link KRISZTA KOVÁCS A constitution is much more than a fundamental legal document. It is the basic charter of the political community, which draws on the experience of the past and expresses hopes for the future to create a set of principles that are beyond the power of ordinary legislative majorities to change. The 1989 Constitution of Hungary was a good example of this. It had the potential to facilitate democracy and free markets and to ensure equal protection to all persons. In April 2011 a brand new constitution was promulgated, named the Fundamental Law. It changes the characteristics of Hungarian constitutionalism, abandoning the idea of a secular state based upon liberty, equality and democracy. This article evaluates the equality clause of the 1989 Constitution and the anti-discrimination jurisprudence of the last two decades, and compares the equality provision in the 1989 Constitution with the cor- responding part of the Fundamental Law, thereby offering a measure for assessment of the place of equality in the Fundamental Law. The first part of this article provides a detailed analysis of the 1989 Constitution and examines the interpretive practice of the Constitu- tional Court concerning the three dimensions of the equality clause: prohibition of arbitrariness, a ban on discrimination and affirmative action. The second part describes the main features of the Fundamen- tal Law that focus on the problem of equality, and how the wording of it in many aspects has an anti-egalitarian character. Further, the ban on discrimination marks, like the affirmative action clause, a step back from the level of equality guaranteed by the 1989 Constitution. i5 Disunited.indb 171 2012.09.28. 10:57