Hungary's Viktor Orbán has chipped away at institutions that make a democracy healthy, including the judiciary, where he has stacked courts with loyalists, reduced judges' pay and limited expression.

Once suppressed under communist rule, the feast of St. Stephen is now the country’s defining civic and religious holiday.

Should Hungary follow through with its withdrawal from the world’s only permanent global court for war crimes and genocide, it will become only the third country in the institution’s history ...

Hungary signed the Rome Statute in 1999 and ratified the treaty on Nov. 30, 2001. The court’s newest member, Ukraine, formally joined in January, bringing the number of member states to 125.