The article is a polemic between Leo Tolstoy, a Russian writer and a moralist of the nineteenth century, and Leon Petrażycki, a Polish lawyer and a philosopher of law of that period – on the social significance of law and morality. Tolstoy’s and Petrażycki’s roads crossed due to a young man named Krutik, a law student at the University of St. Petersburg. Krutik wrote a letter to Tolstoy, whom he considered a moral authority, asking to dispel his doubts caused by reading the works of Petrażycki. Indeed, Tolstoy affirmed
that the appropriate regulator of human life is morality. In contrast, Petrażycki proclaimed that the raison d’être has both morality and law, but if one compares their social significance, the higher value should be given to the law. Krutik had a dilemma, which thinker to agree with? Analysis of Tolstoy’s and Petrażycki’s views made in this article leads to the conclusion that in fact they were arguing about how to implement the idea of love, somewhat differently interpreted by them. While Tolstoy categorically rules out the possibility of realizing it on legal grounds, Petrażycki was firmly convinced that the law can, absolutely, be its carrie

Authority – even though the title of this paper may suggest so – is not a phenomenon opposing culture. It is actually a product of culture or, as sometimes said, of the achievements of civilisation. Since authority is a product of culture, it may not be treated as a phenomenon isolated from it, without any ties with cultural patterns, which may – as a result – act as determinants of the institutional and functional qualities of authority. Culture and its products (including knowledge, law, religion, morality, etc.), like other social phenomena, can become factors stimulating the exercise of authority, or act as factors to stabilise or curb this exercise within the framework of the patterns (norms) it has created. Societies make constant choices in terms of adopting, modifying, and rejecting various cultural patterns.

Modernity understood as a permanent crisis of legitimacy and authority is a constant challenge for constitutionalism. The article reconstructs the danger of substituting political nature with moral imperatives. In modern societies, political disputes turn into so-called culture wars, and the dividing lines are marked by two moralities fighting each other: a liberal morality and a conservative morality. Using selected examples from the constitutional judiciary, I put forward a proposal of rethinking the definition of political nature in constitutionalism to deal with the crisis of legitimacy and authority that plagues it.

Authority – even though the title of this paper may suggest so – is not a phenomenon opposing culture. It is actually a product of culture or, as sometimes said, of the achievements of civilisation. Since authority is a product of culture, it may not be treated as a phenomenon isolated from it, without any ties with cultural patterns, which may – as a result – act as determinants of the institutional and functional qualities of authority. Culture and its products (including knowledge, law, religion, morality, etc.), like other social phenomena, can become factors stimulating the exercise of authority, or act as factors to stabilise or curb this exercise within the framework of the patterns (norms) it has created. Societies make constant choices in terms of adopting, modifying, and rejecting various cultural patterns.