A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts on the conventional foundations of law: from the dispute over conventionalism in legal theory to the analysis of conventional acts and constitutive rules. All articles are available free of charge in open access.
Conventions and constitutive rules in law
Does law ultimately rest on social convention? Conventionalist readings of Hart’s rule of recognition — and their critique — are among the most heated disputes of contemporary positivism. In parallel, the analysis of conventional acts and constitutive rules develops, reaching in the Polish tradition to Czesław Znamierowski’s conception, and in the international one to John Searle’s theory of speech acts and social ontology.
Selected texts
- Odczytywanie reguł konstytutywnych z tekstu prawnego. Przykład ułaskawienia — Karolina Gmerek, Michał Krotoszyński, No. 1(46)/2026 (in Polish)
- Identification of Conventional Acts in Law as a Process of Recognizing Their Sense — Karolina Gmerek, No. 3(28)/2021 (in English)
- Realizm prawniczy i rodzaje funkcjonalne. Metafizycznie redukcjonistyczny naturalizm Michaela Moore’a — Torben Spaak, No. 2(27)/2021 (in Polish, translation)
- Why Legal Conventionalism Fails — Adam Dyrda, No. 1(10)/2015 (in English)
- Obiektywność w prawie – podejście instytucjonalne jako alternatywa dla dominujących stanowisk teoretycznych — Maciej Pichlak, No. 2(9)/2014 (in Polish)
See also
Classics of Legal Theory and Philosophy · Hans Kelsen and Legal Positivism · Ronald Dworkin and the Debate with Positivism.
For authors
The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy — including conventionalism and the ontology of law — in Polish and English, in open access with no publication charges and with double-blind peer review. The journal is indexed in Scopus, DOAJ and ERIH PLUS (100 points on the Polish ministerial list). See the guidelines for authors.
An editorial collection. Last updated: July 2026.