István Balsai

István Ákos Balsai (5 April 1947 – 1 March 2020) was a Hungarian politician and jurist, who served as minister of justice between 1990 and 1994. He was a member of Parliament from 1990 to 2011, when he was elected a member of the Constitutional Court of Hungary.

Professional career Balsai was born in Miskolc on 5 April 1947, the son of public prosecutor József Balsai (1915–1969) and teacher Mária Szalontai (1917–1991). His father participated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as a result he was fired from his job and forced to work as a manual worker until his death. István Balsai finished his elementary and secondary studies in Budapest, where the family had lived since 1943. He earned a doctor of law at the Faculty of Law of the Eötvös Loránd University in 1972. He became a trainee lawyer in that year. He passed the special exam in 1974, and began to work for Budapest no. 21 Lawyer Working Community until the end of the Communist period. He worked as a private lawyer from 1995 to 2007.

István Balsai married lawyer Ilona Schmidt in 1973. They have two sons, Szabolcs (b. 1976) and István (b. 1982), both of whom are lawyers.

Balsai was re-elected MP from the MDF national list in the 1994 parliamentary election, when his party lost majority of the seats. Later this group transformed as National Forum. Balsai was excluded from the MDF and its parliamentary caucus in 2005.

He was elected to a member of the Constitutional Court of Hungary with the effect 1 September 2011. As a result, he resigned from his parliamentary seat and other political positions on 31 August 2011. He served in this capacity until his death. Balsai died on 1 March 2020 due to an incurable disease.