Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej

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

IVR

Why Edward Abramowski’s cooperativism may be not the utopia?

Dr Karol Kuźmicz

University of Białystok

English abstract: Edward Abramowski (1868–1918) was a famous Polish theorist of cooperativism. He wasa socialist but critical assumptions of Marxism theory, which dominated at the turn of 19thand 20th century. The author thesis is that Abramowski’s ideas were not utopian. His ideaare confirm in reality since nowadays cooperatives and cooperative movement are part ofsocio-economic reality. According to Abramowski cooperative possess following features:1) is a cell of the future society; 2) is a voluntary association for the common interestsof people with equal rights; 3) is a co-own and jointly govern; 4) law without coercion isthe service of all man and who voluntarily accept it; 5) protects individual freedom; 6) theprinciple of majority does not infringe the freedom of individuals; 7) cooperative is part ofthe creation of a new world. Abramowski did not accepted idea of revolutionary struggle. He believed in the essence of cooperativism is the idea of human brotherhood. This is notonly the social message, but first of all the moral message for change the human relations.

Keywords: Edward Abramowski, cooperativisim, utopia

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(8)/2014, pp. 29-40

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Number of downloads: 326

Shackled by the legal sensus communis. On the difficulties of critically oriented sociology of law

Dr Hanna Dębska

Pedagogical University of Cracow

English abstract: The Polish sociology of law is unfamiliar with the critical sociology of law as proposedby P. Bourdieu – one of the most acclaimed contemporary sociologists. Therefore the mainaim of the paper is to indicate the causes of this neglection. The text also points out waysin which Bourdieu’s approach can assist in describing and explaining the social functioningof the legal universe. There are several reasons for the lack of reception of Bourdieu’stheory. The lack of critical debates in the field of law is caused by the assumptions of thetheory. Its main goal is to uncover the mechanisms of domination. Bourdieu’s project givesan opportunity not only to disclose the mechanisms by which the law preserves existingsocial relations, but also to discredit its universality by showing that it favours dominantgroups and agents. As such, Bourdieu’s theory threatens the foundations of the field oflaw. Another reason for this negligence among the Polish sociologists of law is structuralin nature. Firstly, the problem lies in the location of the field of law in the field of power.Secondly, in a specific position that sociology of law holds at faculties of law: academicswho are working on that field are mostly lawyers entangled in legal thinking schemata (legaldoxa), legal sensus communis which is considered as indisputable in the field of law.

Keywords: legal sociology, Pierre Bourdieu, legal doxa

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(8)/2014, pp. 18-28

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Number of downloads: 352

A short history of the British Critical Legal Conference or the responsibility of the critic

Prof. dr Costas Douzinas

Birkbeck, University of London

English abstract: General jurisprudence is a type of thinking about law and the social bond developed by British critical legal scholars. Returning to the classical concerns of (legal) philosophy, it examines the legal aspects of social reproduction both inside and outside state law, treating posited law as a part of wider legality. It brings back to the centre the aesthetic, ethical and material aspects of legality, as well as includes the political economy of law, the legal constructions of subjectivity and the ways in which gender, race or sexuality create forms of identity both disciplining bodies and offering sites of resistance. The British Critical Legal Conference (CLC) is a school of thought committed to a plurality of theoretical approaches to law and to radical politics. The first CLC took place in 1985 and has taken place annually without interruption since. The CLC has introduced a number of themes, approaches and strategies unknown or dismissed by mainstream scholarship, including semiotics, rhetoric, literature, aesthetics and psychoanalysis. A variety of critical schools, such as postmodernism, phenomenology, postcolonialism, critical race, feminism, queer theory, art theory and history, the ethics of otherness, the ontology of plural singularity, the critique of biopolitics and post–politics have been pioneered in the CLC.

Keywords: Critical Legal Studies, aesthetics, ethics, British Critical Legal Conference

Language: Polish
Translated by: Rafał Mańko

Published: Number 1(8)/2014, pp. 5-17

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Number of downloads: 378

The justification system of John Rawls’s theory of justice

Mgr Wojciech Ciszewski

Jagiellonian University

English abstract: The paper considers a fundamental issue set against the backcloth of John Rawls’s theory of justice, namely the structure of its justification system. The issue is so significant, because justification fulfills a key role in the Rawlsian conception. J. Rawls offers a sophisticated system consisting of different arguments aimed at reaching full justification. In the author’s opinion, there are five elements that relate to each other: 1) original position with the idea of the veil of ignorance, 2) reflective equilibrium, 3) public reason, 4) overlapping consensus, and 5) fundamental constructivist ideas. The five above mentioned arguments seem to be based on four different argumentative strategies: 1) a coherentist strategy – referring to the general and internal coherence of the system; 2) a contractualist strategy – based on the notion of social contract; 3) a pragmatic strategy – referring to the connection with effective social practices; and 4) a constructivist strategy which is founded in the particular view of reasonableness. The justification system evolves from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism. However, though the system develops, it is always aimed at the same goal – to gather our considered beliefs and facts about a modern society into a coherent set of judgments which may claim to be valid.

Keywords: John Rawls, justice as fairness, veil of ignorance, original position

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(6)/2013, pp. 34-53.

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Number of downloads: 402

Evidence (or proof?) as law’s gaping wound: a persistent false aporia?

Prof. dr José Manuel Aroso Linhares

University of Coimbra

English abstract: In the paper I would like to allude to the possibilities that at last seem recognisable (and can be explored) when, expressly refuting the scission postulate (either in its luminous positive version or in its deconstructive aporetic reproduction), an internally relevant thesis for methodological unity between evidentiary adjudication and adjudication tout court (between judicial reasoning with proof and adjudicative reasoning as the realisation of Law) is advocated – with the certainty that the defence of this claim does not deny (or dilute) the specificity of the evidence problem, but instead provides this specificity with new opportunities for being understood and experienced in direct connection with the (increasing!) need to identify law’s specific project and its autonomous practical world as an unmistakable cultural acquisition. To condense the argument, I would say that methodological unity has to do with the priority of controversy – as a specific practical structure demanding judgment and the constitutive entrance of the comparing Third – whereas the specificity of evidential judgment corresponds to the irradiance of the referential claim and the narrative intelligibility that identifies it.


Keywords: law of evidence, Piyel Haldar, judicial reasoning, realisation of Law

Language: Polish
Translated by: Bartosz Wojciechowski

Published: Number 1(6)/2013, pp. 5-20.

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Number of downloads: 387

On three limitations of the lawyers’ power

Dr Paweł Jabłoński, Dr Przemysław Kaczmarek

University of Wrocław

English abstract: According to the initially assumed concept of limitations of lawyers’ power the most important elements of those limitations are: legal text, legal culture, and ethics. This structure is characterized by the relations where the anterior element defines the framework of the latter, i. e. text affects legal culture and ethics, while legal culture affects ethics. However, exceptions apply where the latter element might lead to the collapse of the framework of the primary factor (for instance, interpretation contra legem based on axiological argumentation). The aforementioned structure of limitations of legal power is complemented by interaction of various other elements, such as social expectations, political entanglement (depending on the extent to which it is not consumed by ethics) and non-judicial expertise.

Keywords: limitations of the lawyers’ power, legal text, legal culture, ethics

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(6)/2013, pp. 93-108.

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Number of downloads: 376

The ways of understanding creative (constructive) interpretation

Dr Olgierd Bogucki

University of Szczecin 

English abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the notion of creative interpretation (of any text, especially creative interpretation of a legal text). The author points out that there are two different meanings of the expression “creative interpretation”. The first one can be called “ontological” and the second one – “methodological”. A given interpretation is ontologically creative when it creates a new object (which is a new meaning of some sort) and it is methodologically creative when it is established without applying any rules. Different theoretic approaches to legal interpretation presuppose different relations between ontological creativeness and methodological creativeness. The article explores some of them. The main thesis of the article is that when we say that a given interpretation is ontologically creative, we do not need to say it is methodologically creative (and vice versa).

Keywords: legal interpretation, interpretation ontologically creative, interpretation methodologically creative

Language: Polish

Published: Number 1(6)/2013, pp. 21-33.

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Number of downloads: 380