the time of their issuance, in accordance with international consensus; decrees using the principle of responsibility, rather than guilt; decrees targeting those hostile to the republic, not an ethnic group in general; decrees meeting the proportionality test; In Decision 14/1995 Coll. the court held that the decree at issue was legitimate. It found that since the decree has fulfilled its purpose and has not produced legal effects for more than four decades, it may not be reviewed by the court for its adherence to the 1992 Czech constitution. In the court's view, such a review would lack legal purpose and cast doubt on the principle of legal certainty (an essential principle of democracies adhering to the rule of law). Confiscation formalities Although under Decrees 12 and 108 confiscations were automatic on the basis of the decrees themselves, Decree 100 (nationalization of large enterprises) required a formal decision by the Minister of Industry. According to the Constitutional Court, if a Decree 100 nationalization decision was made by someone other than the minister the nationalization was invalid and subject to legal challenge. Abuses While hearing appeals of court decisions dealing with Decree 12 confiscations, the Constitutional Court held that courts must decide whether a confiscation decision was motivated by persecution and a decree used as a pretext. This applied to cases of those who remained in the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreement (gaining German citizenship while remaining loyal to Czechoslovakia) and those convicted as traitors whose convictions were later overturned (with their property confiscated in the meantime). Slovakia Legal status Slovakia, as a legal successor of Czechoslovakia, adopted its legal order by Article 152 of the Slovak constitution. This includes the Beneš decrees and Czechoslovak Constitutional Act 23/1991 (the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms). This act made all acts or regulations not compliant with the charter inoperable. Although the Beneš decrees are a valid historical part of Slovak law, they can no longer create legal relationships and have been ineffective since 31 December 1991. On 20 September 2007, the Slovak parliament adopted a resolution concerning the untouchability of postwar documents relating to conditions in Slovakia after World War II. The resolution was originally proposed by the ultra-nationalist Slovak National Party in response to the activities of Hungarian members of parliament and organizations in Hungary. The Beneš decrees were a significant talking point of the Hungarian extremist groups Magyar Gárda and