Central European University, Democracy Institute (Budapest, Hungary)

English abstract: The purpose of this article is to examine the position of Evgeny B. Pašukanis regarding the problem of autonomy of law. The source material for the research is his monograph entitled The General Theory of Law and Marxism (1924), in which he laid down the framework of his hylomorphic theory of law, also described as materialist or realist. The article begins with a reconstruction of the basic assumptions of Pašukanis’s hylomorphic theory of law and then moves on to the key issue of his views on the genesis of juridical form. In the light of the analysis, the article shows that the essence of law in J Pašukanis’s view is that it is a form that shapes and makes possible the relations of economic exchange that constitute its proper matter. Against this background, the article addresses the issue of the autonomy of law, indicating that it should be considered in two dimensions: the internal autonomy of law, i.e. the autonomy of juridical form in relation to its content, and the external autonomy of law, i.e. the autonomy of law in relation to the state, politics and ideology. When it comes to the internal autonomy of law, the paper points out that the relationship of the form of law to its matter is – in Pašukanis’s view – of a dialectical nature, which results in his rejection of Marx’s conception of law as a ‘superstructure’ reflecting economic relations in the ‘base.’  When it comes to the external autonomy of law, Pašukanis is firmly on the side of a hard ontology of law, based on its hylemorphic substance (the composite of the matter of acts of exchange and its legal form), which makes law primary vis-à-vis the state and politics and essentially distinct from ideology. This does not, of course, exclude the ideological nature of law, but – again contrary to Marxists – Pašukanis does not allow for the recognition of law as an essentially ideological phenomenon.

Keywords: autonomy of law, ideology, hylomorphism, juriscentrism, juridical form, legal form, Pašukanis

Language: Polish

Published: nr 4(41)/2024, pp. 91-103

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2024.4.91

Download: Download

Number of downloads: 200

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

University of Warsaw

Abstract: The main aim of this article is to reconstruct the theoretical project of the Polish legal philosopher Artur Kozak, while focusing on its core philosophical and sociological assumptions. In his writings A. Kozak laid the foundations for a unique philosophical standpoint called juriscentrism. Despite the sudden death of A. Kozak in 2009, with his flagship project left incomplete, juriscentrism still possesses great potential, mainly because of its innovative reception of Hans Lenk’s interpretationism, Herbert L.A. Hart’s internal point of view concept, and Peter Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s sociological theory. In the first section of this article I provide a general reconstruction of A. Kozak’s project, in accordance to his intentions which were laid down in his text entitled The Limits of Judicial Discretion (juriscentrism as a cultural fact and an ethical postulate), and afterwards, in the second section, I analyse the three important sources of this project to show what distinguishes juriscentrism from other concepts in the Polish legal theory and philosophy.

Keywords: juriscentrism, Artur Kozak, interpretationism, judicial discretion

Language: Polish

Received: 02.06.2018
Accepted: 15.09.2018

Published: Number 1(19)/2019, s. 79-93

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2019.1.79

Download file: Download
Number of downloads: 709