Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a tool that allow predicting the environmental effects of a project. Undoubtedly, the basic element of the EIA is the EIA report: and if so, the question arises who is qualified to prepare the report. The purpose of the study is to present the evolution of the rights of EIA report experts from the 1970s to modern times, presented from the perspective of legal sciences. The implementation of the amended Directive 2011/92 took place from 1 January 2017 by introducing formal education criteria and/or experience for EIA experts, which were softened by the amendment of 19 July 2019. In the study, I put forward the thesis that there is a tendency in Polish legislation
to lower the requirements for EIA experts, which makes national regulation contrary
to the spirit of Directive 2011/92. Research methods used in the study include primarily the dogmatic approach, the method of consistent interpretation, and – to a lesser extent – the comparative and historical method.

“You can get lost when standing still too.” These words of Edward Stachura are a metaphor of the main proposition of the paper. It aims to suggest a way to “set the ball rolling” by designing the paths of education for lawyers anew, with civil society in mind, and not just thinking of the requirements of legal training. Lawyers with knowledge in the field of information technology, interdisciplinary lawyers for business, lawyers-guardians of the rule of law and justice all need study programmes to take their predispositions, goals, skills, and abilities – all at different levels – into account. The purpose of the article is to shed light on the extra-legal barriers hindering the taking of a practical step ahead. The author shows three main ways of educating lawyers and explains why they are so important and why they call for changes in study programmes. Next, the author points to the obstacles faced by reformers and suggests exploring their actual impact on education in law and the level thereof.

This text is a contribution to the discussion on the state of legal education in Poland. The author refers, in particular, to the article by A. Czarnota, M. Paździora and M. Stambulski regarding a hidden program in legal education, describes the existing situation and proposes changes that should be introduced in legal studies and teaching methods for future lawyers. On selected examples, she shows how one can oppose the domination of dataism in university teaching at law faculties in
Poland and at the same time educate competent lawyers and conscious citizens.

The purpose of the article is to indicate the selected potential and desired consequences of establishing doctoral schools to educate doctoral students in the field of legal sciences, with a special consideration of the interdisciplinary nature of such schools. The paper addresses the Polish legal framework. The article proposes a thesis that doctoral schools have a chance to benefit the education of future doctors of law, especially thanks to their interdisciplinary nature, which involves
educating doctoral students of law together with representatives of other scientific disciplines. Other issues raised include also the opportunities and risks involved in the new form of doctoral education – including those resulting from some higher education institutions adopting only apparently interdisciplinary solutions. The article is an original work, the subject matter has not been covered in other academic papers, and concerns a new legal form of educating doctoral students – meaning
doctoral schools, which have been operating since the 2019/2020 academic year. The theses proposed in the article may be significant to both the theory and practice of educating doctors of law at Polish higher education institutions and research centres.

Changes in the university model related to such phenomena as globalisation or technological development are important from the point of view of lawyer education. The aim of the study was to assess whether Polish legal provisions on the design of the programmes of law studies and the specific normative criteria for the evaluation of the quality of education allow a lawyer education model corresponding to a knowledge-based economy (KBE) to be formulated. The analysis showed that the provisions on the design of study programmes and the evaluation of the quality
of education do not allow a model study programme for the field of law, so that it can fully meet the requirements of the KBE, to be created. It was noted that creating a minimum normative standard in a legal education programme is necessary. Persons involved in the teaching of lawyers and beneficiaries of legal services should be involved in the development of this standard. The conducted research may improve legal solutions in such a way that they contribute to the improvement
of the process of creating study programmes in the field of law. The point is that they should be comparable and comply with GOW requirements. At the same time, they must ensure equal access to the legal professions for all law graduates.

The aim of the research was to verify system solutions in the field of teaching law at the secondary school level. The authors analysed the main factors affecting the quality and quantity of matter related to law – the core curriculum, questions appearing on the secondary school-leaving examination and other local circumstances / related to a particular institution. According to the authors’ opinion, low legal awareness results from the underrepresentation of law at the secondary
school level. As a result of the analysis, authors came to the conclusion that the problem does not only lie in the underrepresentation of law in the secondary school curriculum, but is also a consequence of several imperfect solutions in the education system. In the last chapter, the authors suggested optimization solutions.

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 article undertakes a few aspects of clarity of legal texts acts for expert and for layman. There are two different points of view and two supporting proposals, which help to understand a law (a legal text act). The article focused on following issues: (1) a meaning of clarity of legal text act (as a specialized text), (2) linguistic competence, communicative competence, legal communicative competence, (3) legal textuality discourse, (4) question of simplification as a remedy for clarity of law, (5) legal text education as a developing of legal communicative competence.

A discussion on the law studies and the legal apprenticeship system in Poland has been offered in the article from the point of view of a question about the objectives of educating lawyers and about whether the current system of legal education is appropriate. By pointing to the system-determined role of lawyers pursuing their profession within institutionalised structures of the system of justice, the article concentrates, among others, on issues concerning the selection of the subjects to be taught. But especially on the dilemma whether legal education should produce skilled law technicians or elites co-shaping the ethical, intellectual, cultural, and economic profile of society. The views contained in the article are presented starting from an assessment of the significance of market knowledge through a determination of the utility of curricula for further professional development of lawyers both as actual lawyers and pursuing other professions and ending with a comparison of teaching broken down into traditional branches of law and newly-forming fields thereof. The article addresses also the claims for opening law to interdisciplinarity and the role of lawyer as a profession of trust in the context of a constant need to reinforce the trust in law itself.

Research on the functioning of public administration is interdisciplinary. The analysis of the functioning of public administration requires a systemic view in which the system of relations between the entire system and individual subsystems of public administration on the one hand and its external environment on the other is an important element. This approach comes from the management sciences. It is reflected in the science of administration. The social subsystem is a particular subsystem of public administration requiring an interdisciplinary approach. In the Polish system of public administration, the social subsystem consists of employees forming the civil service corps and other staff employed in offices and other public administration structures. Formation of the administration staff is associated not only with the recruitment of properly educated candidates for work in the offices of public administration bodies. It is very important to shape appropriate ethical attitudes of officials of both government and local government administration. They should know the rules of official ethics. However, it is not possible to codify all the ethical standards of a public administration employee, so the general standards of the moral law should be applied in this respect. Currently, graduates of higher education studies preparing for work in administration are generally adequately prepared for analysing normative acts, issuing administrative decisions or understanding the rules of the legal system in general, but they lack the basis for addressing to a sufficient extent the issues related to ethics of acting and respecting the values adopted in the society.

In the article, the author discusses the basic assumptions of the reform of the Law on Higher Education and Science, which is to be has been introduced in Poland in autumn 2018, with particular emphasis on the rules of employing university teachers. One of the most important changes in this area is the resignation from appointment as a basis for establishing employment relationships with this professional group in favour of an employment contract. It is the end of the process of departing from the employment model based on the special status of university teachers, which has lasted for over a dozen years. Now, they will largely be subject to general labour law regulations. This means making the legal regulation more flexible and therefore also reducing the protection against dismissal, the right to which has been vested in the appointed teachers so far. The author also believes that the changes currently being implemented are only the first stage of the reform, which should result in a significant increase in financial outlays for higher education institutions and in the approximation of the level of salaries of university teachers to standards in developed countries.

The article discusses the Case Method – the dominant method of teaching in American law schools, based on an analysis of judicial decisions, created in the 1870s by Christophus Collumbus Langdell. Langdell perceived law as a science similar to physics or chemistry, and hence as an ordered system of objective knowledge, and the method of teaching that he created was intended to educate people dealing with law in a scientific manner. The article presents Langdell’s concept of law and the impact of his teaching method on the trends in American legal philosophy – classical jurisprudence and legal realism.

The article attempts to present the legislative changes relating to the so called Act 2.0, i.e, the law on higher education together with its implementary regulation on studies as well as the proposed university apprenticeship, which has not as of yet been made into law of any kind. These changes may have a considerable impact on legal education in Poland, and, hence, on the public administration sector in the context of its needs. For it seems justified to assume that the two research areas, i.e. the public administration sector and legal education are both interrelated and that they exert reciprocal influence upon each other. For public administration, in order to function properly, requires a supply of lawyers whereas the latter, in turn, considerably affects its practices – for instance, by way of academic activities and jurisprudential construction or judicial review. The text focuses, above all, on outlining the postulate of the so called good administration. Subsequently, selected issues are presented in the areas of legal education that are related to such administration and can serve to either implement the postulate or to weaken it. Presented are also the assumptions of the draft of the, so called, academic apprenticeship as well as the draft law together with its implementary regulation. Moreover, attention is paid to the phenomenon of mythologisation of practical education presenting a desired direction of legislative action in that respect

The article raises an important problem of legal education in Poland. After covering the changes in legal education in the world, the paper moves on to focus on the role of academic and practical legal education. The authors point to the specific role of the hidden dimension of legal education, which tends to be unseen, but plays a key part in educating lawyers in Poland. The final part of the article discusses the possible changes to be made in the system of legal education.