Amnesty and Pardon Under the Slovak Law and Their Unique Story (original) (raw)

The article analyses a unique phenomenon in the Slovak society - amnesty that has been abolished nearly twenty years later after it was granted and this procedure was confirmed by the highest authority that oversees constitutionality - the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic. The authors focus on the analysis of this phenomenon from a comparative law perspective and from the perspective of national constitutional and criminal law. An interesting and sadly amusing case when the amnesty granted by the deputy president was abolished twenty years later is apparently unique worldwide. The uniqueness of this case lies in several aspects which deserve a more detailed legal analysis. There is a limited number of cases worldwide when amnesties were abolished but these cases have always concerned either an amnesty related to a war conflict genocide or an amnesty related to a mass destruction of people for political reasons. This was not the case in Slovakia. In 1998, Vladimir Mečiar, ...