The subject matter of this paper is the analysis of the phenomenon of subordination
as a manifestation of the relationships between political authority and society and of the phenomenon of equality as an inherent right of individuals. The author has made an attempt to examine the mutual relationships between the two phenomena, especially from the perspective of the impact on the establishment of relationships between political authority and society.

The inspiration behind the article is the two new provisions of the Polish Criminal Code, penalising the up to now unpunished behaviour leading up to murder, introduced by means of the Act of 13 June 2019 on the Amendment of the Act – Criminal Code and Certain Other Acts. Despite the doubts regarding the constitutionality of the act in question, it is reasonable to look into the mechanism of preparation to murder and contract killing, if only because of the fact that these solutions may return in further draft amendments to the Criminal Code. The analysed provisions has given rise to a more general reflection on the legitimacy of penalisation of preparation to murder in the light of contemporary indications of the theory of criminalisation. The discussion also features remarks on the already functioning types of prohibited acts, used, among others, to criminalise acts undertaken at the stage of preparation to murder. The conclusions have led to a demand for the adoption of a provision sanctioning an incomplete variant of preparation to murder and for a total abandonment of separate criminalisation of contract killing.

The article focuses on the normative, institutional, and operational design of the European Union as an area where a considerable part of internal security is based on state-of-the-art technologies and large-scale information systems. This is followed by an analysis of the legal challenges arising from the establishment of so-called smart borders, i.e. borders involving automated border control and the interoperability of all large-scale information systems.
The article poses two fundamental research questions. Firstly: how do these new phenomena affect the effectiveness of management of the external borders in the EU? Secondly: are the existing legal frameworks able to bear the changes that are occurring? It seems that the aspiration towards interoperability may cause tensions underlying the establishment and functioning of the area of freedom, security, and justice (AFSA) in the EU – if the EU’s information systems become more and more interoperable, then the EU legal order may become less and less consistent with them.

The paper aims to show that the Polish Environmental Law is an act that imposes
public imposts to protect Poland’s natural environment. This act features certain
specific qualities and legal solutions. The author has formulated a claim that some
of the provisions concerning the fees for the use of the natural environment and
the emissions surcharge breach the constitutional standards of exclusivity of an
impost act, of the right to predictable taxation, decent legislation, and a democratic
state of law.

The paper shows an American model of the participation of the society in the administration of justice. It is crucial for the Polish discussion about the involvement of public factor in that manner. The analysis is divided between the constitutional right to trial by jury and the institution of justices of the peace, which is unique for the Anglo-Saxon legal system. Research conducted here is the result of a detailed analysis of the case law of the Supreme Court of the United States and selected state courts that shaped the views of the American academia on this issue. Hopefully, this brief study will help to reform the Polish judicial process.

The recent pandemic has forced us in 2020 to rethink the priority of access to medical care. The purpose of this article is to offer a brief account of how two countries – Sweden and the US – have reacted to the pandemic. The authors wish to show how the functions of the regulations and guidelines applied by hospitals and institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic differ from the objectives of health policies based on the principles of the distributive justice theory. The article will thus risk a preliminary assessment of the role of law in a crisis. A short summary of the main points of the distributive justice theory will be followed by an analysis of two cases: the guidelines issued by local authorities in Sweden and the American models applied during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conducted analysis results in a thesis that the objective of the justice theory differs from the regulations actually applied. In the case of Sweden, the recommendations seem to clearly prioritise the life of young people over the life of the elderly, even if there is no shortage of resources. In the case of the United States, we can see more objectives of distributive justice implemented in the analysed triages, but they are still not free from discrimination. The authors therefore call for an improvement of mobility of medical care resources in order to mitigate crises. The cognitive value has an international quality, and is aimed at Polish audiences dealing with the problems in question, be it at the level of a hospital or legislation.

The research objective of this paper is to determine the impact that the repressive nature of the European Commission’s amendments to Directive 2008/115 will likely have on the two basic values of the return policy, that is, its fairness and effectiveness. The basic thesis of this study is that the direction of the directive’s recast, assuming – inter alia – an extension of the list of circumstances for applying the entry ban and detention, is contrary to the declared fairness of the migration policy towards third-country nationals. At the same time, the effectiveness of the planned changes is already questionable at the stage of draft legislation. These considerations are based on a juxtaposition of the proposed changes with currently binding legislation, the Commission’s soft law and the case law of the CJEU. The final effect of these analyses is the finding that the solutions proposed by the Commission will lead to an inevitable increase in the use of coercive measures against irregular immigrants in a way that stands in fundamental contradiction to the declared fairness and proportionality of EU actions. In this context, the effectiveness of the return policy should not be identified with a percentage of returns, but rather with the recognised necessity of overall and perfect control over irregular migrants. At the same time, the Recast Return Directive will contribute to the development of an already existing tendency to treat migration law as an instrument of security and public order, and to use administrative law measures so that they function in a manner equivalent to that of a criminal sanction.

The Schengen legislation is an integral part of the EU law, which translates into a right to free movement within the “borderless area”. This right can be, however, restricted, especially in the light of threats to public safety and order – and, less frequently, to public health. The restriction imposed on account of the above has become an event without precedent in Schengen’s history of over 30 years. The legal measures implemented on borders are absolutely exceptional on a global scale. One of them is the temporary
estoration of control at the internal borders of the EU Member States. The other is the “restriction on non-essential travel to the EU”, meaning, in fact, closing of the EU external borders to citizens of third countries. One could propose a thesis that even the most significant achievements in the process of integration, including the Schengen Area, are temporarily inactivated in the face of an unpredictable supra-European threat. The mission of the EU and its Member States is to establish a new set of rules that will help the Schengen Area survive the early phase of the pandemic by suspending its main principles for some period of time. Will these new rules be extended? And if so – on what conditions? How will it affect the future of the Schengen Area? These issues have not yet been featured and discussed in scientific publications given the recency and relevance of the subject, neither have they been presented in a legal-dogmatic context

The aim of the publication is to establish the function of the legal regulation of the principle of resolving legal doubts in favour of the citizen (in dubio pro libertate), introduced by the amendment of 2017 to the Code of Administrative Procedure. The purpose of the article is also to compare the state of the regulation in force at the time of its entry into force with the legal state created after the introduction of the amendment. It has been argued that the introduced principle worsened the legal situation of citizens in relation to their situation before its entry into force. The paper briefly presents the functions of law, including procedural law. This principle has been discussed and it has been established that it has a protective function. First and foremost, to ensure the security and stability of the law when the legislator has failed to fulfil its duty to legislate correctly and fairly. This function is of particular importance in cases where an administrative body unilaterally determines constitutional rights and freedoms. Resolving legal doubts in favour of the citizens is of particular importance in administrative law, which is very dynamic area (inflation and atomisation of this law), specialised (e.g. technical conditions of development) and complex due to the existence of various hierarchies of sources of law (constitution, statutes and secondary legislation, including local laws). The principle also protects other values, such as an important public interest. As a result of the comparison of the state of regulation before 2017, it was established that as long as the principle of in dubio pro libertate was a postulate of the doctrine, court judgments, interpreted from other principles of administrative proceedings, it did not suffer such significant limitations and could serve more fully to protect an entity. It the current state of law, administrative bodies can make use of it in a limited way only to several proceedings. Nor does it apply if there is – as is common in administrative proceedings – an important social interest or conflicting legal or factual interests of the parties concerned. The originality of the work results from taking into account the case law developed since the entry into force of the principle and the comparison and analysis of the situation of citizens before and after its introduction into the Code. The research carried out for the purpose of this work will be based on the comparative legal method as well as legal-dogmatic analysis, including the analysis of Polish normative material and the resulting views of the judicature and doctrine of law.

Although the 1928 Civil Code Project never came into force, it is considered to be the most important pre-WWII civil codification instrument, referred also in the legal practice, which was undeniably a high quality text with real scientific value. The proposed Civil Code also served as a model and point of reference for the two subsequent Hungarian Civil Codes (Law IV of 1959 and Law V of 2013, the later still in force). The project signaled the passing the borderline between a historical customary law and a codified private law. Its fate reflects all the difficulties of this transition. Conjuring this development and knowing the fate of this still of practical use today: on one hand we can identify the historical roots of continuity, on other hand we can investigate the reasons of discontinuity, which makes this debate very actual.

Zastosowanie pojęcia „uczuć religijnych” w art. 196 Kodeksu karnego, penalizującego ich obrazę, może wydawać się krokiem w kierunku społecznego kompromisu, łączącego światopoglądową neutralność państwa z ochroną imaginarium religijnego przez prawo. Tym samym sformułowanie to mogłoby być zręcznym rozwiązaniem legislacyjnym służącym koncyliacji i spójności społecznej. Niniejszy artykuł ma za cel omówienie negatywnych konsekwencji sformułowania art. 196 Kodeksu karnego w kategorii „uczuć religijnych”. Skupienie się na negatywnych implikacjach obecności tej frazy w prawie służyć ma pokazaniu, iż nie spełnia ona pokładanych w niej oczekiwań: nastręcza trudności interpretacyjnych, brakuje jej cech dobrego prawa, jest daleka od realizmu psychologicznego oraz dzieli i polaryzuje społeczeństwo zamiast je spajać. Pokazuję, w jaki sposób problemy te wynikają właśnie z przyjęcia kategorii uczuć religijnych. W pierwszej części artykułu identyfikuję i omawiam konsekwencje wynikające z takiego sformułowania dla dogmatyki prawa. Druga część pracy poświęcona jest implikacjom tej frazy na gruncie teorii prawa, w kontekście postulatów jurysprudencji. Trzecia część analizuje skutki sformułowania w dyskursie publicznym i szerszej sferze społecznej, przyjmując perspektywę ekspresyjnej funkcji prawa. Tekst przynosi nowe spojrzenie na zagrożenia wnoszone do prawa przez przyjmowaną frazeologię oraz na specyfikę odwołań do emocjonalności w dyskursie prawnym, jednocześnie oferując sugestie potencjalnych rozwiązań.

Subjects of rights originating from inherent human rights are among the subjects of public subjective rights. A deliberation on the matter of natural persons and legal persons, perceived as subjects of these rights, makes it possible to determine a number of questionable issues, which are surely reflected in the materialisation of these public subjective rights in legal practice. The subject matter is very complex, if only on account of the necessity to make use of the results of the linguistic interpretation of the notion of citizen. This is vital even though a legal definition of citizen exists. The intricate nature of the problem in question is also a consequence of the need to make a distinction in the area of the possibility to grant public subjective rights originating from inherent human rights to citizens, non-citizens under the jurisdiction of the Polish state, and non-citizens outside the jurisdiction of the Polish state. Another highly problematic aspect is the possibility to apply an analogy in the field of assignment of subjective public rights originating from inherent human rights to legal persons. Since the very application of analogies in this domain is controversial, it seems reasonable to stress the lack of possibility to consider legal persons as subjects of public subjective rights originating from inherent human rights such as life or health.

The objective of this article is to present a new approach to legal education, which laid the foundations of the law curriculum at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Zielona Góra. The concepts of legal education in Polish literature are presented in the first section of the article. The second part presents doubts connected to the prevailing model of teaching law at Polish universities – general studies (theoretical education). The next section presents the concept of teaching law at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Zielona Góra, based on the concept of practical studies. There are presented solutions to improve the practical education and professional prospects of students. The implementation of this concept is provided in the fourth section. There are presented effects of certain solutions (presented in the third section) after the end of the first cycle of law studies at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Zielona Góra.

The object of the study the findings of which are presented in this article is the written statements of reasons of selected resolutions issued by the Polish Supreme Court and the dissenting opinions submitted in opposition to them. The situation of this type constitutes a relationship of two or more standpoints regarding a problem presented to a bench, referred to in the text as an opposition. The aim of the article is to offer a typology of opposition that can be reconstructed as a result of a dissenting opinion being submitted. It encompasses axiological oppositions in the strong sense and interpretation oppositions (axiological in the weak sense). Axiological oppositions in the strong sense take the form of unipolar or bipolar opposites. The examined group of resolutions has given grounds to also isolate doctrinal disputes as well as disputes over the legal nature of a given institution. The article, however, focuses only on axiological opposites. The cognitive value of the conducted analyses lies: (1) in the identification of the limited role of interpretation guidelines on the level of written statements of reasons, and (2) in the identification of the dissimilarity of situations where a votum separatum becomes an expression of an equal standpoint on the grounds of ius interpretandi considered in broad terms and situations where a votum separatum is a dissenting opinion not so much against a decision that has been made but against the legal regulation that has required this decision to be as it is.