Hungary is about to elect a new president, and this time the choice is not Viktor Orbán’s. Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, which won a landslide election in April and holds a constitutional majority in parliament, has nominated András Baka, the former president of Hungary’s Supreme Court whom Orbán’s government removed from that position in 2012. Parliament is expected to confirm him this week, and the symbolism is difficult to miss. Tisza has framed the nomination as a statement about judicial independence and the rule of law, principles Baka came to personify after his removal.

For Hungarian Jews, and for those watching Hungary from Israel, the nomination raises another question. What does Baka’s long career tell us about his attitudes toward Jews, antisemitism, Holocaust memory, and Israel?

Baka has no substantial public record on Israel and has not been a prominent participant in Hungary’s often contentious debates about the Jewish state. It would be misleading to describe him as either pro-Israel or anti-Israel.

He does, however, have a documented judicial record on Jewish issues, found mainly in his years as Hungary’s judge at the European Court of Human Rights from 1991 to 2008. Several cases in which he participated concerned antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Jewish religious practice, offering clues about the principles he has been prepared to defend.

One of the most important concerns the boundary between freedom of expression and Holocaust denial. In the 1998 case Lehideux and Isorni v. France, the Court considered the conviction of two men who had published material favorable to Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of the collaborationist Vichy regime. Baka sat on the Grand Chamber and joined the majority in finding that........

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