Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej

Journal of the Polish Section of IVR (ISSN:2082-3304)

IVR

Issue 4(45)/2025 of the “Archiwum” is now available

Welcome to the issue 4(45)/2025 of the „Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej” entitled Freedom of Speech of a University Teacher: Between the Known and the Unknown, eds. Paweł Jabłoński, Przemysław Kaczmarek, Mateusz Wojtanowski. The texts are available here.

Issue 2(43)/2025 of the „Archiwum…” is now available

Welcome to the issue 2(43)/2025 of the „Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej”. The issue includes the following texts:

Dr Michał JANOWSKI

Incoherence of Judges’ Decisions on Punishments. Presentation of the Results of an Experiment Conducted with Professional Criminal Judges Using the Method Developed by Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein, David Schkade and Ilana Ritov

Dr hab. Milena KORYCKA-ZIRK, prof. UMK

William David Ross’s prima facie duties vis-à-vis Ronald Dworkin’s principles of law

Prof. dr hab. Beata POLANOWSKA-SYGULSKA

Around Selected Themes in the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. Part II

Natalia Regina SKOCZYLAS, Dr Mateusz WOJTANOWSKI

Gustav Klimt’s Jurisprudence and the Problem of the Scale of Claims on the Law

Prof. dr hab. Marek SMOLAK

The Constitutive and Conventional Nature of Legal Interpretation Directives

Dr hab. Tomasz SROGOSZ, prof. UKEN

Critical Approaches to International Law According to China Miéville and Bhupinder S. Chimni

Dr hab. Adam ZIENKIEWICZ, prof. UWM

The Judge as a Promoter of Peace

Dr Jakub ŁAKOMY

The Professor, the Political Activist, and the Professional on the Tightropes of Culture Wars: Stanley Fish’s Versions of Academic Freedom

 

Reviews:

Prof. dr hab. Tomasz PIETRZYKOWSKI

A central trend of the 21st century? Side-notes on works by Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, An Assault on the State. How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future (Polity Press, Hoboken NJ, 2024) and Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, Ungoverning. An Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos (Princeton University Press, Princeton – Oxford 2024)

Prof. dr hab. Marek ZIRK-SADOWSKI

Karol Gregorczuk, Biobankowanie ludzkiego materiału biologicznego. Spór o model racjonalnego prawa w badaniach biomedycznych [Biobanking of human biological material. The dispute about the rational-legal model in biomedical research], Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk 2024, pp. 387

 

Reports:

Dr hab. Katarzyna JAWORSKA-BISKUP

Debate “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. On emotions in law and literature”, Szczecin, 10 December 2024

Dr Mateusz PĘKALA

2nd Mountain Trek-Conference on the Philosophy of Law of the Polish Section of IVR “Legal education crisis”, Silesian Beskids, 4–6 October 2024

 

The issue is available here.

Karol Gregorczuk, Biobankowanie ludzkiego materiału biologicznego. Spór o model racjonalnego prawa w badaniach biomedycznych [Biobanking of human biological material. The dispute about the rational-legal model in biomedical research], Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk 2024, pp. 387

Prof. dr hab. Marek Zirk-Sadowski

University of Łódź

Language: Polish

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 161-167.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.161

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 190

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Professor, the Political Activist, and the Professional on the Tightropes of Culture Wars: Stanley Fish’s Versions of Academic Freedom

Dr Jakub Łakomy

University of Wrocław

English abstract: Today, academic freedom is increasingly contested amid intensifying culture wars and political polarisation, both within and beyond university walls. Traditional liberal and critical defences of academic freedom—grounded in universal rights, public good, or transformative critique – appear conceptually fragile and normatively overstretched. This paper reconstructs and critically evaluates Stanley Fish’s deflationary and professionalist conception of academic freedom, as developed in Versions of Academic Freedom. Drawing on Fish’s neopragmatist and anti-foundationalist framework, the paper argues that academic freedom cannot be defended by appealing to abstract ideals or external social functions, but only by reference to the immanent logic of disciplinary practice. Fish’s model posits that academic freedom is the limited freedom to perform professional tasks – teaching and research – according to internal standards of scholarly rigour, not a licence for personal expression or political activism. While his approach offers a coherent and context-sensitive alternative to foundationalist accounts, the paper argues that it is insufficient to address the ethical and political challenges of contemporary academia. The paper proposes that defending academic freedom today requires both Fish’s realism about professional constraints and a critical awareness of the political forces shaping knowledge production – an uncomfortable balancing act on the tightrope of post-foundational thought.

Keywords: academic freedom, professionalism, neopragmatism.

Language: English

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 136-153.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.136

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 153

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A central trend of the 21st century? Side-notes on works by Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, An assault on the state. How the global attack on modern government endagers our future, Polity Press, Hoboken NJ, 2024 and Russel Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, Ungoverning. An attack on the administrative state and the politics of chaos, Princeton University Press, Princeton – Oxford 2024

Prof. dr hab. Tomasz Pietrzykowski

University of Silesia in Katowice

Language: Polish

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 154-160.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.154

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 157

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The judge as a promoter of peace

Dr hab. Adam Zienkiewicz, prof. UWM

University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn

English abstract: The principal aim of this text is to draw attention to the singular role of a “promoter of peace”, which may be fulfilled nowadays both by a lawyer who provides legal assistance to a client and a judge. Discussing the matter from the standpoint of legal theory, the study will thus first examine the difference between judicial adjudication of disputes and their resolution, including methods based on the practice of peacemaking, which promotes peaceful interpersonal relations and positive personal transformation of the parties to disputes to establish between them a state known as positive peace. Subsequently, a dogmatic-legal analysis will seek to identify selected applicable regulations which offer the possibility of implementing, on the initiative or with the assistance of a judge, amicable modes of resolving legal disputes pending before a Polish civil court. In the final part of the study, the domestic normative perspective in the field of civil law will be supplemented with major model assumptions and objectives of a special type of court, a so-called Problem-Solving Court (developing especially in the USA), where the perpetrator of an offence who is subject to conventional court proceedings, is given an additional opportunity to effectively counter the causes of lawbreaking and conflicts with members of the community (e.g., ones stemming from drug or alcohol addiction abuse or mental disorders), based on the so-called problem-solving program tailored to the individual, which is coordinated by the judge and implemented by an interdisciplinary team of experts. These deliberations lead to the conclusion that the catalogue of legislative solutions in this respect is gradually expanding, creating a real opportunity to choose and apply various conciliatory methods of managing legal disputes, also on the initiative or with the active participation of the judge, who promotes the restoration of peaceful social relations.

Keywords: judge, peacemaker, Alternative Dispute Resolution, problem-solving court

Language: English

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 120-135.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.120

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 202

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Critical Approaches to International Law according to China Miéville and Bhupinder S. Chimni

Dr hab. Tomasz Srogosz, prof. UKEN

University of the National Education Commission in Kraków

English abstract: Research purpose: The aim of the article is to assess the usefulness of Marxist approaches to international law in the discussion on the existing and developing international legal order. It is a proposal to enrich the theoretical foundations of the discourse on international law that takes place within the walls of Polish scientific and academic centres. Questions arise as to whether Marxist approaches to the law of nations solve the problem of the possibility of changes taking into account the positions of the “ordinary people”, i.e., the Marxian working class, within the existing imperial international legal order? Or maybe this order ruthlessly defends the interests of the capitalist class, which makes any evolutionary change beneficial to the “ordinary people” impossible? Research assumptions/methodology: The article uses the legal theory method, which boils down to analysing doctrinal views on the Marxist theory of law, starting with Marx and Engels, to Pashukanis, and ending with Chimni and Miéville.
Basic theses/findings: The presented Marxist approaches to international law (Chimni and Miéville) differ in terms of the theoretical basis (Miéville drew on Pashuknis and Chimni directly on Marx), which in turn leads to different views on the essence of international law (Chimni proclaims the “class approach” while Miéville builds his theory around Pashukanis’ “commodity theory of law”) and the possibility of reforming the law of nations. Originality of results/epistemic value: Chimni’s approach turns out to be more useful, as, unlike Miéville, he sees the possibility of changing the imperial international legal order serving the transnational capitalist class within the international rule of law and with the use of human rights. Miéville’s theory is too skeptical and nihilistic. Yet, this should not prevent

Keywords: Marxism, international law, imperialism, reform, social class

Language: Polish

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 97-119.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.97

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 177

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The Constitutive and Conventional Nature of Legal Interpretation Directives

Prof. dr hab. Marek Smolak

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

English abstract: The article’s purpose is to demonstrate that the directives of legal interpretation are constitutive and conventional. The directives of legal interpretation are constitutive because they confer the status of legal interpretive practice on social practice. The directives of legal interpretation are conventional because they are arbitrary in the sense given to them by A. Marmor. The directives of legal interpretation constitute not only the legal interpretive practice, but also the values of this practice. Among these values, I include innovative thinking, reasoning by analogy, intellectual challenges. If constitutive conventions are responsive, i.e., if they respond to various human needs and values, then at the core of legal interpretive practice there are values that are momentous for those who participate in these practices. Two types of values are distinguished: values in a strong sense and in a weak sense. Values in the strong sense are values whose realization is acontextual, i.e., independent of any context of a given legal interpretive practice. I include certainty and uniformity of understanding of legal texts in this category of values. On the other hand, values in the weak sense are contextual values, i.e., ones that depend on the goals that legal interpretive practice is supposed to fulfil. Examples of contextual values are adaptability and stability of law. I considered that there is a special relationship between values in both the strong and weak senses and the directives of legal interpretation. Based on mutual expectations, members of a given community assume that a particular directive of legal interpretation best realizes an important value of legal interpretation. The correctness of the above relationship largely depends on previous legal interpretive practice.

Keywords: legal interpretation directives, constitutive rule, conventional rule, values in legal interpretive practice

Language: Polish

Published: Number 2(43)/2025, pp. 80-96.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2025.2.80

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 218

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.