Search Results for: law

What is law, really? Is “law” (ius) something different from “statute” (lex)? This collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy” gathers texts grappling with the oldest question of legal philosophy – the very concept and definition of law. All articles are free to read in open access.

Selected texts

• Czym jest prawo? Cele i środki – Dietmar von der Pfordten, No. 1(1)/2010 (in Polish, translation)
• Rozróżnienie ius et lex we współczesnej filozofii prawa – Maciej Pichlak, No. 2(15)/2017 (in Polish)
• Czy pojęcie prawa jest pojęciem z istoty spornym? – Adam Dyrda, No. 1(6)/2013 (in Polish)

For authors

The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy in Polish and English, in open access with no publication charges and with double-blind peer review; indexed in Scopus, DOAJ and ERIH PLUS (100 points on the Polish ministerial list). See the guidelines for authors.

An editorial collection – extended over time.

A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts on the tension between treating law as an instrument of politics and its autonomy. All articles are available free of charge in open access.

Between instrument and autonomy

Law is often used as an instrument for pursuing political goals – from social engineering to politics of memory – while at the same time its claim to autonomy from current politics belongs to the core of the ideal of the rule of law. The boundary between the legitimate instrumentality of law and an instrumentalization that undermines trust and predictability has become one of the central themes of legal theory – discussed in Poland with particular intensity in the context of the constitutional crisis.

Selected texts

• Nomos podatków globalnych – szkic problemu – Krzysztof Lipka, No. 2(47)/2026 (in Polish)
• Instrumentalizacja prawa a kryzys konstytucyjny – Marcin Romanowicz, No. 1(30)/2022 (in Polish)
• Instrumentalizacja prawa w kontekście polityk pamięci w Europie Środkowej i Wschodniej po 1989 roku – Filip Cyuńczyk, No. 3(21)/2019 (in Polish)

See also

Law and Morality · Classics of Modern Legal Philosophy and Theory · Legal Interpretation.

For authors

The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy – including the rule of law and the relations between law and politics – 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, to be extended as older texts are tagged. Last updated: July 2026.

A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts on the principles of law – the ways this notion is understood and the role principles play in the legal system and in legal argument. All articles are available free of charge in open access.

Disputes over the notion of a legal principle

The contemporary debate on legal principles was opened by Ronald Dworkin, who contrasted principles with rules in his polemic against positivism, and was developed by Robert Alexy, who understood principles as optimisation requirements to be weighed in cases of collision. Polish legal theory, however, has followed its own path. In the classic study by Sławomira Wronkowska, Maciej Zieliński and Zygmunt Ziembiński (Zasady prawa. Zagadnienia podstawowe, 1974), principles are not a separate kind of norm opposed to rules, but norms of particular importance or of a high degree of generality; a distinction is drawn between the directival sense, in which a principle is a norm, and the descriptive sense, in which it is a statement about the characteristic features of a given body of regulation. The very notion of a legal principle thus remains contested, and different branches of legal scholarship understand it differently.

Selected texts

• William David Ross’s prima facie duties vis-à-vis Ronald Dworkin’s principles of law – Milena Korycka-Zirk, No. 2(43)/2025 (in English)
• Remarks About the Axiological Dimension of the Polish Constitution of 1997 and Its Interpretation – Sławomir Tkacz, Zygmunt Tobor, No. 1(30)/2022
• Law and Values Other Than Moral. On Searching for Tropes in Józef Nowacki’s Works – Kamil Zeidler, No. 3(36)/2023
• Robert Alexy’s Theory of Legal Principles – Milena Korycka, No. 1(1)/2010 (in English)
• The Principle of Nullum Crimen Sine Lege as a Source for the Search for the Limits of Linguistic Interpretation in Criminal Law? – Sławomir Tkacz, No. 2(23)/2020

See also

Classics of Modern Legal Philosophy and Theory · Law and Morality. Profiles: Robert Alexy · Józef Nowacki · Zygmunt Ziembiński.

For authors

The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy – including work on legal principles and constitutional argument – 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.

A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts in the aesthetics of law – the field studying the relations between law and beauty. All articles are available free of charge in open access.

What is the aesthetics of law

The aesthetics of law asks about the relations between law and beauty in three perspectives: law as an object of aesthetic evaluation (the language, form and symbolism of law), law in art – from painting and literature to film – and art as an object of legal regulation. In Polish scholarship the research programme of legal aesthetics was developed by Kamil Zeidler (the monograph Estetyka prawa, 2018), and the field – akin to the law and literature movement – has become a recognisable Polish speciality in world legal philosophy.

Selected texts

• Jurisprudenz Gustava Klimta a problem skali roszczeń względem prawa – Natalia Regina Skoczylas, Mateusz Wojtanowski, No. 2(43)/2025 (in Polish)
• Prawo a wartości inne niż moralne. O poszukiwaniu tropów w pracach Józefa Nowackiego – Kamil Zeidler, No. 3(36)/2023 (in Polish)
• Krytyka instytucjonalna jako perspektywa badawcza prawoznawstwa w kontekście filozofii Jacquesa Rancière’a – Mariola Żak, No. 1(34)/2023 (in Polish)
• Ile piękna w prawie? Ile prawa w pięknie? Recenzja książki Kamila Zeidlera „Estetyka prawa” – Dawid Kostecki, No. 3(32)/2022 (in Polish, review)
• Prawo w filmie jako przejaw estetyki prawa i szczególny przypadek kierunku prawo i literatura – Kamil Zeidler, No. 1(26)/2021 (in Polish)

See also

Classics of Modern Legal Philosophy and Theory · Law and Morality.

For authors

The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy – including the aesthetics of law and the law and literature movement – 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.

A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts on natural law – the oldest tradition of legal philosophy – and its contemporary readings. All articles are available free of charge in open access.

The natural law tradition

Natural law is the conviction that above positive law there is a normative order which human beings do not create but discover – an order that provides a measure of evaluation and, on some accounts, a condition of the validity of enacted law. The tradition runs from the Stoics and Thomas Aquinas, through the rationalist schools of Grotius and the Enlightenment, to its twentieth-century revival in response to the experience of lawlessness – from the Radbruch formula to John Finnis’s new natural law theory.

Selected texts

• Problem państwa doskonałego w perspektywie Pascalowskich rozważań o prawie i sprawiedliwości – Edyta Godziszewska, No. 2(47)/2026 (in Polish)
• Prawo naturalne w ramach radykalnego oświecenia – Michał Wendland, No. 4(25)/2020 (in Polish)
• Rozumowanie prawnicze jako rozumowanie praktyczne w świetle nowej teorii prawa naturalnego Johna M. Finnisa – Michał Sopiński, No. 1(21)/2020 (in Polish)

See also

Law and Morality · Classics of Modern Legal Philosophy and Theory. Profiles: John Finnis · Gustav Radbruch.

For authors

The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy – including the natural law tradition – 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, to be extended as older texts are tagged. Last updated: July 2026.

A thematic collection of the “Archive of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy”. Texts on the relations between law and morality and on ethics in legal and public practice. All articles are available free of charge in open access.

Law and morality – the central dispute of legal philosophy

The question of the relation between law and morality has organised legal philosophy from its beginnings. The positivist separation thesis holds that the validity of law does not depend on its moral merits; non-positivist positions – from the Radbruch formula to Dworkin and contemporary non-positivism – deny this to varying degrees. Distinct strands of the dispute include the inner morality of law from the Hart–Fuller debate, the axiological foundations of human rights and dignity, and professional ethics setting limits to the power of lawyers and officials.

Selected texts

• Wszystkie myśli dozwolone. W obronie (niemal) absolutnej wolności nauki – Przemysław Rybiński, No. 4(45)/2025 (in Polish)
• Trzyczęściowe filozoficzne credo Johna Graya – Beata Polanowska-Sygulska, No. 3(32)/2022 (in Polish)
• Etyka głosowania strategicznego w wyborach powszechnych – Łukasz Łyżwa, No. 3(32)/2022 (in Polish)
• Przeciw godności. Argument za niemetafizycznym fundamentem prawa ochrony zwierząt – Tomasz Pietrzykowski, No. 2(27)/2021 (in Polish)
• Etyka zawodowa urzędnika administracji publicznej w Polsce – Dawid Kostecki, No. 2(27)/2021 (in Polish)
• Między sprawiedliwością a miłosierdziem. Porównanie amerykańskiej i rosyjskiej wersji Dwunastu gniewnych ludzi – Paweł Jabłoński, No. 1(26)/2021 (in Polish)
• Formalizm w stosowaniu prawa a etyka na przykładzie prawnych regulacji ochrony środowiska – Adrian Zając, No. 1(16)/2018 (in Polish)
• Krótka historia brytyjskiej Krytycznej Konferencji Prawniczej albo o odpowiedzialności krytyka – Costas Douzinas, No. 1(8)/2014 (in Polish, translation)
• O trzech granicach władzy prawniczej – Paweł Jabłoński, Przemysław Kaczmarek, No. 1(6)/2013 (in Polish)

See also

Classics of Modern Legal Philosophy and Theory · Legal Positivism.

For authors

The “Archive” publishes articles in legal theory and philosophy – including legal ethics and moral philosophy – 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.