The role of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the management of cases and disputes in Nigeria and across the globe cannot be overemphasized. The judicial arm of the government is the arm responsible for interpretation of laws in Nigeria and the judiciary’s role in preserving the rights of citizens across Nigeria also cannot be overemphasized. It ensures that the society is stable in the face of insta-bility and ensures that lawlessness is not maintained. The judiciary ensures that laws made by the legislature are obeyed by ensuring that those who violate the provisions of any established laws are punished. In doing all these, it has been established that the system of administering justice in our courts in Nigeria is extremely slow. Considering the foregoing, alternative dispute resolution as a means of settling disputes has been of tremendous help in easing the hardship of getting cases resolved through the court system. This paper examines ways through which alternative dispute resolution has assisted the Nigerian judicial system and the need to use alternative dispute resolution the more in order to ensure that number of cases handled by courts are drastically reduced. Recommendations are made at the end of the research.

The article attempts to present the identity of the judge through the metaphor of the role as an interactive ritual. The framework of this ritual can be described by means of both intersubjective factors (e.g. legal rules) and individual factors (the subjectivity of the role performer). I apply this conception to the iconic symbol of justice in public space, which is usually associated with the figure of a woman whose eyes are covered with a blindfold, holding the scales of justice in one hand and a sword in the other. It is a visual symbol of the judge; one that is comprehensible to both lawyers and the public.
In carrying out this task, I refer to sociological and anthropological research in the field of visual culture. This perspective determines not only the subject matter covered by the theses formulated in the article but also the research method. It is assumed that visual representation constitutes a communication channel that has a great impact on individual and social memory. For this reason, the presentation of the role of the image and the methods of its interpretation is important for the debate about the role of the judge and the image of the judge in public space. This approach to the subject, which consists in shifting the emphasis from text to image, also rehabilitates the significance of visual representation in jurisprudence, a field traditionally dominated by the view that law is a linguistic phenomenon.

Fixed establishment (FE) is one of the institutions of the EU value added tax system; its structure is essential to correctly determine the right tax jurisdiction of an EU Member State for the purpose of VAT settlement in situations of cross-border provision of services. However, the legal structure of a FE adopted by the EU legislator (and, consequently, adapted to national legislation of the Member States) causes uncertainty when it comes to its interpretation. In the absence of unambiguously defined conditions in EU law to consider a specific presence and activity of an enterprise to be a FE, interpretation rules contained in judicial decisions
issued by the Court of Justice of the EU play an important role. Among attempts
made by the CJEU to clarify the ‘blur areas’ resulting from the dynamics of modern
business processes, one of the most interesting ones is the possibility of considering
a subsidiary to be a fixed establishment for a parent company. The purpose of this
paper is to analyse legal and economic factors, the fulfilment of which may constitute a condition for considering a subsidiary to be a fixed establishment for
a parent company, with particular emphasis on the ruling of the Court of Justice
of 7 May 2020 in the Dong Yang case (C-547/18).

Interpretation is one of key notions on the convergence axis of law and literature. Both lawyers and literary scholars during their practices focus on interpreting complex language texts, establishing the meaning of expressions, reconstructing the sender’s intention, penetrating the influence of the text on the recipient, i.e. questions which turn out to be fundamental in both legal as well as literary texts. Analysis of the legal and literary interpretations allows us to identify differences as well as certain analogies between these two spheres of activity. They may be analysed through referring to the specificity of the entities participating in the interpretative practice, which are the sender and the recipient. The essential difference between interpretation in law and interpretation in literature consists of the rule that a legal text should be interpreted in the way that produces an unequivocal result. On the other hand, in the case of literary interpretation, it is difficult to reach a precise or unequivocal effect of reading the sense. Moreover, in literary interpretation it is not required. In a legal text and in a literary text the author-sender’s intention plays an important role. However, in the case of literary interpretation it is possible to apply a more flexible approach to the reconstruction of the author’s intention than in legal interpretation, where it is necessary to take into consideration rules and objectives of law only. The separateness of legal interpretation is justified foremost by the fact that it is specific purpose-oriented, which is establishing the meaning of the substance of applicable law.

Pursuant to article 9 clause 2 of Ordinance of the President of the Republic of Poland on Administrative Procedure of 1928, persons which possessed so-called legal interest in the case, were entitled to participate in the administrative procedure as a party. Both in procedure initiated by the authority ex officio and initiated on their own demand. The essential and still unsettled question of this construction is: who is authorised by the law to establish the existence of that legal interest, and consequently who decides on the admission of the applicant to the proceeding. This issue has been transferred to the Tax Code of 1997 with the implementation of that scheme, without taking into consideration the legal specificity of the tax assessment, especially self-assessment, to the tax procedure. Furthemore, pursuant to the ontological system, presented by Roman Ingarden in his work Controversy over the Existence of the World, an object which is the initiation of the procedure is an event, not a thing, processes, purely intentional object or an idea. Tax procedural law does not distinguish and name various types of objects properly, which causes serious problems as to legal interpretation. The aim of this work is to give some basic legal and philosophical directions for the reconstruction of the institution of the tax procedure initiation.

The difficult history of Taiwan has preoccupied politicians and scholars for the better part of the last century and is unlikely to be unraveled in the near future. The main issue is the following: are there two separate Chinas or one and if so who has the right to represent China? Both the Taiwanese and Peking governments have consistently adhered the One China theory and both claim the right to represent the country. Many legal concepts were devised in support of either party, including that Taiwan had become res nullius after Japan’s unconditional surrender, or a condominium of the Allied Powers. Several major theories are analysed in depth, based on the interpretation of public international law such as the Peace Treaty of San Francisco, the Treaty of Taipei and the Shimonoseki Peace Treaty. Parallels are drawn between the attempts to decide the legal status of Taiwan and akin attempts performed by some European territories such as bringing Alsace-Loraine in the fold of France. The paper aims mainly at exploring various concepts of Taiwan’s status according to international law. This investigation takes into account the international and the domestic situation.

The principles of „Public Procurement” are important for the proper functioning of the public procurement system. There is no doubt that principles of public procurement system have a special significance for the above mentioned system, since they indicate the direction of interpretation of provisions of the public procurement law as well as they allow a proper interpretation of the meaning of legal norms. The purpose of this elaboration is to present two basic principles of the public procurement law, i.e. the principle of fair competition and equal treatment of economic operators as well as the principle of transparency. The Author indicates the institutional expression of these principles in the procedure of awarding public procurement and indicates the violations of the principles which occur in the practice of law.

Among the institutions adopted from Roman law whose historical evolution within ius commune is particularly interesting, it is worth pointing out the issues connected with the distribution of damage incurred as a result of throwing a part of the cargo overboard from a ship due to the risk of its sinking because of overload. Deliberations of Roman lawyers, gathered under the title De lege Rhodia de iactu, were object of medieval jurists’ creative interpretation. The role of the glossators’ school representatives seems to be particularly significant here as an important contribution to the development of the European legal doctrine in subsequent centuries. In the modern era, the innovations introduced by representatives of this school were considered communis opinio doctorum and it was applied in legal practice of the Imperial Chamber Court of the Reich. Its purpose was compensation for any damage incurred in joint interest or in other people’s interest, which was reflected in the content of ABGB, the Polish Civil Code and Roman-Dutch Law.

The subject of the analysis presented in the text is an argument that tends to (and used to) be raised in the critical discourse on constitutionalism – the allegation of the so-called constitutional fetishism. The argument is to show why the constitutional discourse has lost its potential to explain and create social processes. The reason is that lawyers focus too much only on the content and interpretation of the provisions of the constitution, without considering a broader social context, which makes the constitutional discourse limited solely to legal issues with a simultaneous omission or underestimation of all other aspects of constitutionalism. This attitude of lawyers to the content of the constitution (or – in broader terms – to the provisions of law) is sometimes referred to even as idolatrous, hence the reference to the notion of fetishism in the religious sense. The aim of the text is to analyse the structure of this argument and to attempt to determine the impact it can have on
constitutionalism.

The article is based on an assumption that constitutionalism has a Janus face. A constitution is both a legal and a political act. So far, the public domain has been dominated by legal constitutionalism (constitutional dogmatics), which excludes the constitution from the public sphere, subjecting it to the authority of lawyers-experts. The contemporary political phenomena such as: new populism, illiberal democracy or new constitutionalism should shift the interest of researchers to the political aspect of constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is, therefore, a multidimensional social practice. A political game featuring many actors. And the constitutionalism of lawyers is only one of its possible interpretations. Citizens also have their own constitutionalisms, and different perspectives on constitutionalism, reflecting opposing interests, may lead to conflicts. The constitutional law dogmatics applied to resolve such conflicts would argue for the existence of a transcendental framework for their resolution. A more political approach denies the existence of such a framework. In other words, the dogmatics in question requires democracy to adapt to constitutionalism, while the political approach requires constitutionalism to adapt to democracy. The text is an introduction to a part of a volume featuring articles by authors affiliated with the Centre for Legal Education and Social Theory of the University of Wrocław.

The purpose of the article is to discuss the employee’s right to daily and weekly rest regulated in the Labour Code and having its sources in European law. The study presents the scope of standards resulting from EU treaties, directives and recommendations, which constituted a kind of road map for shaping Polish provisions in this area. Detailed analysis of art. 132 and 133 of the Labour Code shows whereas their interpretation and adopted case-law, draws attention to the shortcomings of the established norms that appear during their application in practice and also provides the basis for indicating de lege lata and de lege ferenda conclusions.

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.

The paper aims at reconstruction and critical discussion with the main tenets of political theory of adjudication, as presented by Rafał Mańko in his book, W stronę krytycznej filozofii orzekania. Polityczność, etyka, legitymizacja [Towards a Critical Philosophy of Adjudication. The Political, Ethics, Legitimacy]. In the paper, I demonstrate: that the interpretation of the concept crucial for the entire theory – which is the concept of political – has been chosen by Mańko in an ideological and a priori manner; that the choice above effectively prevents the realisation of the main objective of the book, which is to legitimise adjudication; that the adoption of the ethics of adjudication advocated in the book is – in the light of the basic assumptions of that very publication – both improbable and hardly acceptable. Finally, I claim that Mańko’s theory, due to its totality, can distinguish neither between legitimate law and violence, nor between justified and unjustified adjudication. As a result, it loses its critical force. All these problems are not peculiar to Mańko’s theory, but they are general weaknesses of various versions of critical jurisprudence.

The aim of the present paper is to operationalise the concept of the political in
order to make it available as an analytical category for the critical study of judicial
decisions (case law). The concept of the political is understood here, following, in
particular, Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory, whereby it is a dimension of a social
antagonism. Such an antagonism can be played out not only in the process of
legislation (creation of abstract and general legal norms), but also in the process of
adjudication (the so-called ‘application of law’, which, however, always has a creative
element to it). As an analytical category, the political can be operationalised
in order to subject judicial decisions to a critique which goes beyond the question
of the ‘correct’ interpretation and ‘application’ of law in a given case, but puts in the
spotlight real social, political and economic conflicts that are at stake. The analytical
framework is exemplified by judicial decisions of the European Court of Justice.

The article attempts to analyse the status of the theory of legal interpretation that
emerges from the contributions of one of the representatives of critical legal studies
(CLS). Legal interpretation is analysed by using concepts drawn from hermeneutic
universalism and the post-structural philosophy of politics. The concepts of Duncan
Kennedy, an American philosopher of law, are subjected to analysis, and his
concept of adjudication, the indeterminacy thesis and the hermeneutic of suspicion
is addressed. The paper puts forward the thesis that the political nature of law – alongside
factors closely related to social structure – is also determined by factors which
pertain to the cognitive subject. This fact has crucial importance for determining
the status of the theory of legal interpretation.

What is law and what is teaching – remains disputable. The departure point shouldbe the notio n of law, which cannot be said to exist without reference to normativity, binding power and predictability. The obstacle in teaching law is that there are several centrifugal forces resulting in disintegration of law. These are, for example: creating fake sources of law such as binding recommendations, amending laws by lower-ranking acts, which is the specialty of the EU; informally adopting the
common law doctrine of stare decisis by Continental Judges; using the interpretation of law as a fig leaf for actually amending it; demanding the disregarding of national laws by judges if they come to the conclusion that national laws are in violation of the EU law by the EU Court, even if there is no procedural framework to do so. In teaching law, a teacher should promote theories and practices conducive to the cohesion of the legal system. Teachers have to take sides in the encounter of conflicting ideas and practices in the spirit of fighting for a better law.

The subject of the analysis presented in the text is an argument that tends to (and used to) be raised in the critical discourse on constitutionalism – the allegation of the so-called constitutional fetishism. The argument is to show why the constitutional discourse has lost its potential to explain and create social processes. The reason is that lawyers focus too much only on the content and interpretation of the provisions of the constitution, without considering a broader social context, which makes the constitutional discourse limited solely to legal issues with a simultaneous omission or underestimation of all other aspects of constitutionalism. This attitude of lawyers to the content of the constitution (or – in broader terms – to the provisions of law) is sometimes referred to even as idolatrous, hence the reference to the notion of fetishism in the religious sense. The aim of the text is to analyse the structure of this argument and to attempt to determine the impact it can have on constitutionalism.

The article is based on an assumption that constitutionalism has a Janus face. A constitution is both a legal and a political act. So far, the public domain has been dominated by legal constitutionalism (constitutional dogmatics), which excludes the constitution from the public sphere, subjecting it to the authority of lawyers-experts. The contemporary political phenomena such as: new populism, illiberal democracy or new constitutionalism should shift the interest of researchers to the political aspect of constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is, therefore, a multidimensional social practice. A political game featuring many actors. And the constitutionalism of lawyers is only one of its possible interpretations. Citizens also have their own constitutionalisms, and different perspectives on constitutionalism, reflecting opposing interests, may lead to conflicts. The constitutional law dogmatics applied to resolve such conflicts would argue for the existence of a transcendental framework for their resolution. A more political approach denies the existence of such a framework. In other words, the dogmatics in question requires democracy to adapt to constitutionalism, while the political approach requires constitutionalism to adapt to democracy. The text is an introduction to a part of a volume featuring articles by authors affiliated with the Centre for Legal Education and Social
Theory of the University of Wrocław.