Seite 399 [399]
THE RULE OF LAW REVISITED — FINNISH APPROACH
——o—
RAIMO LAHTI"
INTRODUCTION
When writing in honor of Károly Bára, I recall many memories of our scientific
contacts and friendship. The first contact is already from November 1976, at that
time of Károlys guest lecture at the University of Turku, where I had in the same
year started permanently as Professor of Criminal Law. Later our cooperation
continued especially during the 30 years of Finnish-Hungarian Criminal Law
Seminars in 1979-2009 and during our common period in the International
Advisory Board of the European Institute of Crime Prevention and Control,
affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI).
“The rule of law and criminal law” was the general subject of the Finnish-Hungarian
criminal law seminar in Miskolc in 1996, and I will after 25 years come back to this
topic in the following essay. Firstly, however, I have some background comments
on that Finnish-Hungarian cooperation (in which Karoly Bard had an important
role) and on the significance of that cooperation.
In our bilateral criminal law seminars we had much common issues and
interests to be discussed and studied. As Tibor Horvath aptly pointed out in his
opening speech at the Miskolc seminar, the criminal law developments in the
1990s and were both in Finland and Hungary “influenced by the principle of a
democratic constitutional state, and dependent upon the guarantee taken from
the principle of nullum crimen and nulla poena, and the requirement of a penal
system based on rationality and humanity”.
1 Professor emeritus of Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Finland
? As for that 30 years’ seminar activities, see Ligeti, Katalin (ed.), Homage to Imre A. Wiener,
Nouvelles Etudes Pénales, No. 22, Toulouse, Association Internationale de Droit Pénal,
Erés 2010; Raimo Lahti: From Comparative Criminal Law to the Europeanization and
Internationalization of Criminal Law, in Ligeti (ed), Homage to Imre A. Wiener, 21-31.
3 See the citation of the speech in the preface by, Imre A. Wiener, Finnish-hungarian seminars
on criminal law and administrative law, Acta Juridica Hungarica 37 (1995/1996), 125-128,
127. This Vol. 37, Issue 3—4/1995/96 of the journal Acta Juridica Hungarica included the
papers presented at the seminar. Raimo Lahti, The Rule of Law and Finnish Criminal Law
Reform, Acta Juridica Hungarica 37 (1995/1996), 251-258.
+ 397 «