Articles – Page 30

The Very Idea of Legal Positivism

Prof. dr Stanley L. Paulson

Washington University

English abstract: Much in recent discussions on legal positivism suggests that the controversy surrounding the notion turns on the distinction between inclusive and exclusive legal positivism. As a point of departure in distinguishing them, the separation principle is helpful. The separation principle counts as the contradictory of the morality principle, according to which there is “necessary overlap” between the law and morality. What the legal positivist’s denial of the morality principle comes to can be refined, we are told, by appealing to the distinction between inclusive and exclusive legal positivism. One can acquire a broader perspective by opening up the field in order to cover not only inclusive and exclusive legal positivism but also non-positivism, represented by the defence of the morality principle, that is the view that there is necessary overlap between the law and morality. Say what you will about inclusive versus exclusive legal positivism – some defend the distinction, others dismiss inclusive legal positivism as a non-starter. In any case, I want to argue that a far more fundamental distinction within the positivist camp lies elsewhere. The distinction I have in mind is that between legal positivism qua naturalism (J. Austin) and legal positivism without naturalism (H. Kelsen). For reasons institutional in nature, legal positivism has largely been discussed in a vacuum, there is a standing presumption to the effect that there are ties between legal positivism and ‘positivism writ large’ in the greater philosophical tradition – or, as it would be put in present-day philosophical circles, ties between legal positivism and naturalism.

Keywords: legal positivism, Hans Kelsen, The Separation Thesis, naturalism, normativism

Language: Polish
Translated by: Marcin Romanowicz

Published: Number 2(15)/2012, pp. 20-35.

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Number of downloads: 505

Four puzzles about the rule of law: why, what, where? And who cares? (part 2)

Prof. dr Martin Krygier

UNSW Sydney

English abstract: Central among the many obscurities that attend the rule of law are those named in the title of the article. The first part contains some preliminary remarks and attempt to answer the first question. This attempt is based on distinguishing to ways of understanding what rule of law is. By the first way rule of law is a theological concept, i.e. to know what it is we have to know its aims and by the second, anatomical one, the most important thing to understand it are rules and institutions that are usually conceived as its part. The authors holds a position that only the first way is appropriate and gives his own interpretation of aims of rule of law. This aim is legal reduction of the possibility of arbitrary exercise of power that is connected with four important reductions – of domination, of fear, of indignity, and of confusion.

Keywords: rule of law, arbitrariness, exercise of power, aims of rule of law

Language: Polish
Translated by: Katarzyna Mikołajczyk-Graj

Published: Number 2(15)/2012, pp. 5-19.

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Number of downloads: 580

Systems Theory and Puzzles of Legal Culture

Dr Jan Winczorek

University of Warsaw

English abstract: Legal culture is a concept as central to legal studies and sociology of law as difficult to define. It aims to serve important theoretical needs but it is also responsible for some puzzles that trouble legal and socio-legal scholars. Some of them are quite famous: the puzzle of the nature of Japanese litigiousness, the puzzle of differing German and Dutch legal cultures, or, recently, the issue of cultural defence. Some are lesser known, like the multitude of courts’ adjudicating strategies in Poland’s allegedly unitary legal culture. The paper argues that the problems of such nature are a conceptual artefact, a result of objectifying understanding of legal culture as a phenomenon. It is stressed that in such studies more weight should be put on the immediate, procesual nature of investigated phenomena. In order to support these claims, conceptual machinery of systems theory is utilised. First, a general view of N. Luhmann regarding the notion of culture is accepted and applied to the idea of legal culture. Further it is demonstrated how the aims served by the notion of legal culture can be achieved by appealing to such theoretical concepts as structural coupling, first- and second- order observation, and above all – temporal nature of social systems. A general conclusion of the paper is that in the study of “legal culture” an evolutionary perspective is unavoidable.

Keywords: Niklas Luhmann, Systems Theory, legal culture, structural coupling, first-order observation, second-order observation, temporal nature of social systems

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 106-125.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.106

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Number of Downloads: 694

Legal Databases and Their Functions in the Process of Interpreting and Applying the Law

Dr Wiesław Staśkiewicz, Prof. dr hab. Tomasz Stawecki

University of Warsaw

English abstract: This article deals with the implications of the widespread practice of use of legal databases in Polish judicial practice. Apart from the undeniable positive effects of development of an electronic civilization, the article deals with the negative effects of use of databases. This is because a conflict arises between the possibilities offered by the latest technology in the form of easy access to legal texts, commentaries and thousands of judicial rulings, and the unique historical experience of the judiciary in a former communist country, methods of legal interpretation sustained by legal positivism, and domination by a syllogistic model for application of the law. All results in dysfunction of legal databases. A kind of “hybrid interpretation of law” is formed, which is a combination of a legacy, the effects of transformation of the economy and the system, as well as the new rules of law, on the one hand, and the ideology of bound judicial decision on the other. The nature of the “hybrid interpretation of law” is the infinite scope for citing judicial rulings and commentaries available in the databases without taking a broader theoretical view – without supporting arguments, and so the citing of a ruling has become the basis for adjudication. The question of whether the possibilities that electronic databases offer will cause interpretation of this kind to turn into a new form of legal rhetoric, or whether it will remain merely a means of adaptation of the discretionary power of judges to legal positivism doctrine, and thus the sophism of the period of transformation, remains an open one.

Keywords: legal database, legal interpretation, hybrid interpretation of law, legal positivism, syllogistic model for application of the law

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 84-105.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.84

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Number of downloads: 744

The Phenomenological Basis of Lawyers’ Professional Ethics

Dr Marcin Pieniążek

Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Cracow University

English abstract: The thesis of the paper is connected with the statement that the casuistic, quasi-legal model of legal ethics should be abandoned. What should be broadened instead, is individual and collective, namely corporate one, awareness of the specificity of legal experiencing of the values relevant from ethical-professional perspective and based on firm methodological basis. The conception of legal ethics presented in the paper gives up the attempts of describing it from the perspective which is forced by categories connected with legal positivism. This suggestion refers to the following: (1) phenomenological “thinking according to ethical-professional values”, (2) the notion of ethical-professional intuition and (3) the concept of a lawyer’s and legal corporation’s field of axiological awareness. The 20th century phenomenological philosophy and, closely connected with it, informal ethics of values, as presented mainly by M. Scheler and N. Hartmann, serves as the basis of the suggested ethical-professional concept. Phenomenological ethics, relying on individual experience of ethical values, based on individual acts of value preference in case of moral conflict, gives a chance to distance itself from a quasi-legal, casuistic perception of legal ethics. It, then, creates the possibility of necessary methodological independence of legal ethics from law.

Keywords: Lawyers’ Professional Ethics, phenomenological philosophy, ethical-professional values, ethical-professional intuition, field of axiological awareness

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 69-83.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.69

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Number of downloads: 765

Intertemporal Issues in Administrative Law and Concept of Retroactivity in Law

Prof. UAM dr hab. Jarosław Mikołajewicz, Prof. UAM dr hab. Andrzej Skoczylas

Adam Mickiewicz University

English abstract: In essence, this study aims at presenting basic intertemporal problems of administrative law. These problems are extremely complex and, despite a commonly held view on the alleged poorer theoretical issues in the field of administrative law, intertemporal issues in administrative law demonstrate an even greater level of complexity compared with such a well-developed discipline as civil law. This state of affairs stems from the very nature of this branch of law. Presumably, this is why within the field of administrative law we may encounter application of not only all basic descriptive principles of administrative law, but also of those principles that are particular in a certain aspect (e.g. the principle of validity, the principle of lex mitior retro agit). It is equally important to mention that intertemporal decisions are made also in the field of administrative law; the content of these decisions is only partially (if at all) determined by positive law.

Keywords: intertemporal problems of law, principle of law, administrative law, principle of validity, principle of lex mitior retro agit, intertemporal decision

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 51-68.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.51

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Number of downloads: 893

Law & Economics as a Theory of Decision Making in Legal Contexts – Decision Theoretical Foundations, Their Misinterpretations and Excessive Claims of Economic Analysis of Law

Mgr Magdalena Małecka

Polish Academy of Sciences

English abstract: The article treats law & economics as a proposal of a theory of decision making in legal settings. It is emphasized that the distinction between two approaches in economic analysis of law: the neoclassical and the behavioral one, is made with reference to two different theories of decision making applied in the realm of each approach. The neoclassical approach is based on the theory of expected utility, whereas the behavioral one – on prospect theory. According to the scholars on both sides, application of decision theory might be helpful in influencing behavior by legal norms in a more sophisticated way. The claim of the article is that law & economics scholars misinterpret the assumptions and propositions of the theories and/or formulate excessive claims, if they argue that decision theoretical findings provide knowledge about the way in which people’s decisions are influenced by law.

Keywords: law & economics, theory of decision making, legal norm

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 34-50.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.34

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Number of downloads: 663

The Rule of Recognition – a Remedy for the External Uncertainty of Law?

Dr Urszula Anna Kosielińska-Grabowska

Pedagogical University of Cracow

English abstract: According to H.L.A. Hart, the rule of recognition is one of secondary rules that is supposed to be a remedy for the uncertainty of primary rules. In this paper we will try to answer the question: To what extent may this rule guarantee legal certainty? After discussing important differences between the concept of the rule of recognition and Kelsenian concept of the basic norm (Grundnorm), we will examine the role of the rule of recognition in the context of the problem of the external certainty of law. When analyzing its content, meaning and effects of using the criteria of validity contained in the rule of recognition, we discovered three types of uncertainty related to the rule of recognition: the substantive, interpretive and applicative one. Our considerations have led us to the conclusion that the rule of recognition, having as its aim the function of removing the uncertainties of law, is itself one of the sources of these uncertainties. It is difficult to consider it as a genuine effective remedy to the external uncertainty of law. The construction of the rule of recognition means that the degree of certainty which we obtain as a result of its application appears to be greater than in the case of “ordinary” primary rules within the system, yet we will never obtain a total external certainty of law unless we apply another theoretical construction.

Keywords: Herbert L. A. Hart, Hans Kelsen, Grundnorm, rule of recognition, External Uncertainty of Law

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 23-33.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.23

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Number of downloads: 1,005

Three Models of Derivatives’ Regulation. Some Thoughts on the Entanglement between Economic Theory and the Evolution of Law

Dr Mariusz J. Golecki

University of Łódź

English abstract: The paper aims at analysing whether the evolution of options, futures and other derivatives is an effect of a wider impact of the evolution of financial market and economic theories upon legal system. This constitutes, however, a part of a wider topic, namely the legal approach to risk, uncertainty and speculation. Thus it is crucial to examine whether recent regulation of financial markets and exempting such transactions as options, futures or swaps, performed by set-off from the existing anti-speculative regulation (or abolishing of the majority of anti-speculative rules) may have a wider impact on the notion of risk in law and theory of regulation.

Keywords: economic theory of law, law and economics, derivative, evolution of law, financial market

Language: English

Published: Number 1(4)/2012, pp. 5-22.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2012.1.5

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Number of downloads: 697

Lawyers’ professional roles in the light of the good governance model

Mgr Mariola Żak

University of Warsaw

English abstract: The aim of the present paper is to verify the thesis that the institutionalization of regulatory solutions promoted by the idea of good governance leads to a change in the way lawyers and their professional responsibility towards civil society are perceived. Considering the claims that the positivist paradigm of government is in crisis and the postulates of changing the legitimacy of the judiciary expressed in the governance concept, the way in which the social roles of lawyers are understood needs reinterpreting. In the first place, the role of concepts of governance and good governance in contemporary law is described. Then normative coordination models of collective actions by means of which the ideas of governance and good governance can be put into practice are characterized. Finally, the traditional professional roles of lawyers and their so-called accessory roles are presented. The considerations constitute a normative meta-analysis, referred to as meta-governance. The reflection is conducted according to the descriptive method. The article is a contribution to future research and an attempt to identify the major problems faced by lawyers in connection with the implementation of good governance.

Keywords: good governance, social steering, legal multicentrism, normative standard, lawyer’s professional roles, positive responsibility, professional competence

Language: Polish

Received: 06.06.2017
Accepted: 16.08.2017

Published: Number 1(16)/2018, pp. 103-120.

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Number of downloads: 443

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