The analysis of constitutional interpretation and the various methods of interpretation used by constitutional courts has received much attention in recent years. This scholarship has mostly been limited to qualitative studies. We take a different approach, using text mining research to determine how regularly the Hungarian Constitutional Court reflects on the methods of interpretation. The novelty of our research lies in the fact that we conducted a comprehensive constitutional sociological study using text mining, which can provide useful contributions to a better understanding of the culture of constitutional argumentation. For this purpose, we have created a complex corpus covering all Hungarian Constitutional Court decisions and orders between 1990 and 2021. Our first hypothesis is that the methodological practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court is not selfreflexive in general (across all its decisions). According to our second hypothesis, the 100 most important decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court are more self-reflexive than the rest of the sample. We found evidence that the methodological practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court is not self-reflexive in general; according to our measurement, only 44% of Hungarian Constitutional Court decisions refer to the use of interpretative methods. We also found that the 100 most important decisions are more self-reflexive than the rest of the sample (99%). In sum, the Hungarian Constitutional Court makes a more concerted effort to provide subtle interpretation for decisions which have a more elevated socio-economic-political significance.

Opponensek: Chronowski Nóra és Bencze Mátyás