Archiwum
Filozofii Prawa
i Filozofii Społecznej

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

IVR

Ascription of Content to Provisions of the Law by Judicial Practice. Theoretical Analysis of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s Judgments

Wojciech Rzepiński

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland

English abstract: The article examines the way in which the Polish Constitutional Tribunal operates, which involves replacing its own process of interpreting the provisions under review by accepting the interpretation of another court. The objective of the article is to provide a theoretical account of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s conduct to the readers. Therefore, the concepts developed at the Poznan School of Theory of Law are used, namely the distinction between a provision of the law and a legal norm, as well as a distinction between pragmatic and nonpragmatic interpretation. The role of the metatheory used to analyse the Tribunal’s conduct is also played by Robert B. Brandom’s analytic pragmatism. Analytic pragmatism allows the conclusion to be drawn that, through its activity, the Tribunal indicates 1) what an agent must do (within the legal practice) for the vocabulary of normative acts to mean something (PV-sufficiency), and 2) what vocabulary is sufficient to define those practices (VP-sufficiency). The practice of applying the law can be described with the use of the TOTE concept (Test-Operation-Test-Exit). In this case TOTE cycles are open-ended. Therefore, in its further practice, the Tribunal might indicate further practices-or-abilities which are sufficient for the vocabulary of normative acts to mean something.

Keywords: judicial practice, Constitutional Tribunal, analytic pragmatism, provision of the law, legal norm, application of the law

Language: English

Published: Number 2(35)/2023, pp. 65-76.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280//AFPiFS.2023.2.65

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Statement of reasons for a dissenting opinion as a dialogical utterance on the example of selected rulings of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal

Dr Maciej Wojciechowski

University of Gdańsk


English abstract: This paper claims that the statement of reasons for a dissenting opinion is a dialogical utterance. Due to the limitations imposed by the secrecy of judicial deliberations it is impossible to describe the direct exchange of arguments between the members of a judicial panel. To some extent, however, we can assume that the presented opinion of the court and a dissenting opinion represent the end result of such deliberations. It is not the same, however, to call both of them examples of dialogue. Real-time dialogue consists of a multitude of utterances of people taking part in a discussion. In the case of the final statement of reasons of the judgment and of the dissenting opinion, the number of utterances is in general limited to two separate large blocks of sentences, each block being one utterance. For this reason we can distinguish between the notion of ‘dialogue’ and that of ‘dialogical utterance’. Such a distinction was proposed in Polish theory of literature in the 1970s by J. Lalewicz. According to Lalewicz, a dialogical utterance depends on the preceding opinion, and its main feature is the ability to become a reference to that opinion. Apart from presenting forms of dialogicality, the article aims to explain these forms by presenting features other than the personal style of legal writing of a given judge. Three factors that might explain the higher or lower level of dialogicality in dissenting opinions are presented. The first factor is of an institutional nature, that is, the way work in the court is organised. The second factor is what I call a potential for an argument. Finally, the third one is the axiological importance of a given case.

Keywords: dissenting opinion, dialogical utterance, dialogue, judicial deliberations, statement of reasons for a court judgment, Constitutional Tribunal, legal disagreement

Language: Polish

Received: 06.06.2017
Accepted: 22.08.2017

Published: Number 1(16)/2018, pp. 69-82.

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