Archiwum
Filozofii Prawa
i Filozofii Społecznej

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

IVR

Separate and Dissenting Judicial Opinions and Their Significance for a Democratic Society. Reflections Against the Background of Polish Law

Joanna Misztal-Konecka

John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland

English abstract: In most legal systems, the administration of justice in complex and difficult cases is, entrusted to panels composed of multiple judges. In practice, rarely does it happen that this designated group of judges is required to reach a unanimous decision. The subject under scrutiny in the article is the issue of the possibility and significance of disclosing the fact that the judgment was not reached unanimously, along with the rationale that the judge(s) pursued in opposing the majority position. The analysis of this issue requires reaching not only for the legal dogmatic method, but also the legal comparative and axiological methods. The presented research leads to the conclusion that legislators (although not in all countries and not in all international organizations) are increasingly open to allow for the disclosure to the parties and the public of the fact that not all judges voted for a particular decision, along with the reasons for the dissenting position. Despite several objections to the institution of dissenting opinion (votum separatum) connected with undermining the authority of the court and the judgment issued, it turns out that democratic society, which values transparency and the power of substantive arguments, approves of this institution. Dissenting opinion safeguards the judge’s right to express their view, as well as the right of the parties and the public to know the reasons for an alternative solution, including their creative use for the benefit of the judiciary and legal science. Consequently, one can claim that dissenting opinions and the reasons for them constitute a crucial factor in shaping the perceptions of justice.

Keywords: dissenting opinion, democratic society, administration of justice, authority of judicial decisions, justification of the acts of applying the law

Language: English

Published: Number 2(35)/2023, pp. 43-52.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280//AFPiFS.2023.2.43

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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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