Transitional Justice and the Constitutional Crisis: The Case of Poland (2015–2019)

Redakcja — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 20:04:09 +0000

Dr Michał Krotoszyński

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

English abstract: During the last four years the situation in Poland has been a matter of interest to the worldwide legal community mostly due to the constitutional crisis. Yet, the years 2015–2019 were also a time of a revival of transitional justice measures, such as cleansing the public sphere of communist symbols, remodelling of lustration law, and further reduction of pensions of communist secret service employees and officers. In this paper I argue that these spheres are interconnected and that Poland’s constitutional crisis has a transitional justice dimension. I start with an overview of retrospective instruments dealing with the communist past introduced in the last four years. Next, I turn to the constitutional crisis itself, discussing its possible explanations and transitional justice aspects. In the end I claim that the dramatic constitutional backsliding that Poland has recently experienced can be explained not only as a power grab, but also as a result of the tension between the rule of law and the principle of individual responsibility on one hand – and the resort to collective accountability in an attempt to get what the government sees as justice on the other.

Keywords: transitional justice, lustration, decommunization, Poland’s constitutional crisis, Polish Supreme Court, rule of law, sincerity principle

Language: English

Published: Number 3(21)/2019, pp. 22-39.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2019.3.22

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Political, Moral or Criminal? Reflections on Guilt Based on Karl Jaspers’ Theory

Redakcja — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 19:06:42 +0000

Mgr Justyna Jezierska

University of Wrocław

Abstract: This article concerns guilt as a concept which lies at the intersection of law and philosophy. My reflections are founded on Karl Jaspers’ lectures entitled The Question of German Guilt. Jaspers distinguished four types of guilt: criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical. This distinction was made immediately after the Second World War, during the Nuremberg trials, when the problem of the German guilt was widely debated – both by the Allies, the victors, and in the German society. What is superimposed on this distinction is the issues of collective and individual guilt. A clear demarcation was intended (according to the philosopher himself) to clarify these issues and to come to the truth. My task in this text was to present Karl Jaspers’ guilt theory, to explain its ambiguous fragments, to challenge the objections against this theory, and to attempt to apply it to the Polish discussion about lustration.

Keywords: guilt, political responsibility, collective guilt, individual guilt, lustration, memory studies

Language: Polish

Received: 17.09.2017
Accepted: 10.10.2017

Published: Number 2(17)/2018, pp. 90-101.