The volume offers a comparative and critical analysis of the related case law assessing the restrictions imposed on individual rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book explains the jurisprudence of four Visegrad Group countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia; hereinafter V4 countries) as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) using a specific methodological approach developed for the comparative research. It describes the dynamics between the national and international levels in judicial protection while highlighting national and international specificities.

Monika Florczak-Wątor is a Full Professor of Constitutional Law at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Constitutional Studies, Director of the PhD Interdisciplinary Program “Society of the Future” at the Doctoral School in Social Sciences, and Deputy Chair of the Committee of Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She serves as a Substitute Member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) and as Main Expert for Legislation in the Polish Parliament. She graduated in law and political science, passed the state judicial examination, and is an attorney-at-law and member of the Regional Chamber of Attorneys-at-Law in Kraków. She is a member of numerous academic bodies and associations, including the European Law Institute and the European Group of Public Law, as well as a co-founder of the CEE Chapter of ICON-S and the “Democracy in Practice” Association. She has served as principal investigator in numerous research projects, including projects on participatory constitutionalism in the EU, the rights of future generations, and states of emergency. She is the author of more than 150 publications and editor of the volumes Constitutional Law and Precedent: International Perspectives on Case-Based Reasoning (Routledge, 2022) and Judicial Law-Making in European Constitutional Courts (Routledge, 2020), as well as co-editor of the volumes Constitutional Traditions and Constitutional Transitions (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024) and States of Emergency and Human Rights Protection: Theory and Practice in the Visegrád Countries (Routledge, 2024).

Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz is director and research professor of the Institute for Legal Studies, Centre for Social Sciences and also professor of constitutional law at the ELTE Law School in Budapest. She worked at the Hungarian Constitutional Court between 2003-2007 and 2010-2013 as law clerk in different positions. She has published extensively on the development of the Hungarian constitutional system, the constitutional complaint procedure and on the competence of the constitutional court. She has published over 100 publications on the rule of law and separation of powers (and the position of the constituent power) with regard to judicial review and the protection of human rights. She is fluent in English and in French, intermediate in German and native in Hungarian.  Since 2015, she is managing editor of the indexed English language law journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Acta Juridica Hungarica and chief editor since 2017 of the Állam- és Jogtudomány, a Hungarian legal periodical of the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences.