The main purpose of the presented research project is to prepare an initiating answer to the present state of judicial integrity recognised as the top of legal professions and the legal system as such. The method comes mainly from the Oxford analytical jurisprudence, nevertheless, the historical and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as a legal practice, were taken seriously into consideration. The main theses and their scientific standpoints are: (i) at present, we are facing the disintegration of integrity; (ii) one of the sources of it lies in the very grounds of major jurisprudential terms, understood as parts of the Hartian internal point of view and that there are fundamental analytical paradoxes of integrity, generating practical dysfunctionalities; (iii) it is possible to solve main problems through a completely new approach: an ontological turn in the philosophy of law causing the idea of law as a concept and a new concept of integrity, namely ‘negative integrity’. It could be easily and effectively treated as practical support for firstly improving judicial integrity and secondly legal practice in general.

The paper presents the literary vision of „the power of medicine” as sketched by Aldous Huxley in his book Brave New World. Huxley created a futuristic image of society which reaches a state of complete organization and control of human procreation. In Huxley’s world humans are born as a result of in vitro fertilization and cloning. Human bodies, due to genetic selection, are produced for desired features of appearance and character, and the means of achieving universal happiness are appropriate pharmaceuticals. Artificial procreation as well as reproductive genetics anticipated by Huxley have become reality in the 21st century, implying several moral and legal dilemmas. In bioethical discussions questions emerge about the consequences of using new genetic technologies and the legal boundries of medical experiments on human bodies.

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.

The Greek polis is the birthplace of a culture whose influence persisted despite the fall of the very form of polis. This culture plays a significant part in the life of communities of today, especially in the domain of the so-called Western culture. Polis means both state and city, but most of all it is “a society, a community of people living together”. This form of governance enabled equal citizens to exercise direct supervision over their governments. Polis itself was not an invention of ancient Greeks, but the public nature thereof, especially in the form of the debate-based democracy and the rule of law – not of people – turned out to be their contribution to the idea of a city-state. Democracy as a common form of a political system can be found particularly in the Greek culture of polis. The general notions deriving from the Greek polis, i.e. citizenship, democracy, equality, independence, autonomy or justice, express a desire for a better life of an individual in a community. The democracy of classical times, characterised by equal citizenship and freedom of speech, is considered as the first one to moderate fierce social-economic disputes. It is this polis that made it possible for philosophy and science to develop. The modern-day discussion on the state in a globalised and increasingly urbanised world can surely benefit from a reflection on the civil and legal dimensions of polis.

The article deals with the practice of invoking philosophers in the reasons for judgments of the Polish courts. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the case law of the common courts, administrative courts, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal allowed for the formulation of several main conclusions. First, although judgments containing references to philosophers constitute only a small fraction of all the case law, at the same time, when measured in absolute numbers, cases of quoting philosophers are not marginal. Second, in the two last decades there has been a clear intensification in the use of philosophical references in judgments. Third, references to philosophers exercise a number of different functions falling within the clarification and persuasive purposes of grounds of judgments. Fourth, there is no one attitude among courts and the parties towards the presence of philosophical arguments in the judicial process. The titular issue is not the further stage of the legal scholarship’s discourse on “judges as philosophers” in the likeness of Dworkin’s “Judge Hercules”. The practice of referring to philosophers by the courts is primarily an issue of the style of reasons for judgment and the role of non-legal sources in the rationalisation of judicial decisions – and not so much in the making of them. In the author’s view, the case law study reveals the utilitarian potential of philosophy for judicial argumentation.

The choice of the formula of justice is being made by a law enacting body. In a democratic state parliament, or a political body is the main source of formulae of justice,
out of the nature of things dominated by political discourse. Here we touch the most significant problem of enacting fair and just law: considerations on the topic of justice reveal a connection of the choice of the formula of justice with philosophy. The compromise of philosophy co-acting in the twentieth century with totalitarian systems refuted then ultimately a myth about a possibility of direct translation of philosophical categories to political categories. The political practice of a liberal democratic state rejects the idea of metaphysics, which would determine the current purposes of the politics. There is a suggestion that democracy faces philosophy in the order of thinking. In spite of such attitude, the author decides to allow for philosophical establishing of the liberal-democratic state, but also allowing for the simultaneous realizing that it is by itself justified as the most reasonable political practice of the state. The philosophy may justify democracy only accepting in turn itself as a variant of a democratic discourse, although the only one which is able to have some distance to mere assumptions of philosophy, without ceasing in this way it is being a democratic discourse. Such philosophy is actually the hermeneutics of politics.

It is a widespread opinion that modern jurisprudence was shaped first of all by the tradition of Roman law. In this article author tries to explain why ancient Greek legal thought should be equally important. As an example he considers the evolution and the different meanings of the concept of nomos. Four issues are presented in this paper. First, nomos in the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. Secondly, nomos in one of Pindar’s poems. Thirdly, the distinction between physis and nomos made by the sophists. Fourthly, thesmos, nomos and psephisma in the legislative practice of Athenian ekklesia.

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 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.

In the article, I contrast the contemporary legal dogma with the challenges underlying the political nature of law and judicial practice. Both the Continental jurisprudence and the judicial decisions issued by European courts are dominated by the dogmatic current – and treated as politically neutral acts. My intention is to carefully verify this quite common belief in this paper. Making use of H. Berman’s views, I assume that the present shape of jurisprudence and the judicial practice based thereon have been established as a result of political conflicts and that the legal dogma is capable of neutralising and solving modern-day political conflicts precisely because of the qualities of the said shape. It is therefore both a political and an apolitical activity. But this paradox is only apparent. In its strive to keep its paradigm alive, the dogma should be flexible in reacting to the challenges occurring in its political environment. It can – and should – modify the “buffer” of the theory upon which it is set in order to retain its core. In the article, I try to answer the question about the boundaries of the possible adaptation of jurisprudence and juridical practice with respect to claims raised by the domain of politics – claims currently articulated as the strongest by the so-called critical theories of adjudication. The final part of the paper is an attempt – based on the example of theses formulated in monograph
by R. Mańko, W stronę krytycznej filozofii orzekania – to outline the said boundaries.

The article deals with the practice of invoking philosophers in the reasons for judgments of the Polish courts. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the case law of the common courts, administrative courts, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal allowed for the formulation of several main conclusions. First, although judgments containing references to philosophers constitute only a small fraction of all the case law, at the same time, when measured in absolute numbers, cases of quoting philosophers are not marginal. Second, in the two last decades there has been a clear intensification in the use of philosophical references in judgments. Third, references to philosophers exercise a number of different functions falling within the clarification and persuasive purposes of
grounds of judgments. Fourth, there is no one attitude among courts and the parties towards the presence of philosophical arguments in the judicial process. The titular issue is not the further stage of the legal scholarship’s discourse on “judges as philosophers” in the likeness of Dworkin’s “Judge Hercules”. The practice of referring to philosophers by the courts is primarily an issue of the style of reasons for judgment and the role of non-legal sources in the rationalisation of judicial decisions – and not so much in the making of them. In the author’s view, the case law study reveals the utilitarian potential of philosophy for judicial argumentation.

The Greek polis is the birthplace of a culture whose influence persisted despite the fall of the very form of polis. This culture plays a significant part in the life of communities of today, especially in the domain of the so-called Western culture. Polis means both state and city, but most of all it is “a society, a community of people living together”. This form of governance enabled equal citizens to exercise direct supervision over their governments. Polis itself was not an invention of ancient Greeks, but the public nature thereof, especially in the form of the debate-based democracy and the rule of law – not of people – turned out to be their contribution to the idea of a city-state. Democracy as a common form of a political system can be found particularly in the Greek culture of polis.
The general notions deriving from the Greek polis, i.e. citizenship, democracy, equality, independence, autonomy or justice, express a desire for a better life of an individual in a community. The democracy of classical times, characterised by equal citizenship and freedom of speech, is considered as the first one to moderate fierce social-economic disputes. It is this polis that made it possible for philosophy and science to develop. The modern-day discussion on the state in a globalised and increasingly urbanised world can surely benefit from a reflection on the civil and legal dimensions of polis.

The main aim of this paper is to consider the acceptability of application of Article 58 § 2 of the Polish Civil Code in the social security law in the regard to employment contract with pregnant women from the point of theory of justice. I argue that application of Article 58 § 2 of the Polish Civil Code resulting in exclusion of pregnant women from social security system not only might be doubtful from the constitutional law perspective, but it is also problematic from the point of view of the concept of justice realized by social security law. In the first part I recall in short basic typologies and definitions of justice. This leads to the observation, that although in philosophy there is no one understanding of justice, this notion has a long and established tradition. In following parts I ana- lyze which concepts of justice are being realized by constitutional law, civil law and social security law. I argue that as constitutional law and social security law deal mostly with distributive justice, civil law realizes mostly commutative justice, which also concerns Article 58 § 2 of the Polish Civil Code. In the last part I demonstrate consequences of applying Article 58 § 2 of the Polish Civil Code in the social security law on the example of pregnant women being excluded from the social security system. This is followed by the final conclusion that although also for lawyers notion of justice has a long tradition, it is often im- posed in spite of "locally" realized types of justice, which leads to unwelcome and unforeseeable consequences.

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 subject of the work is an attempt to analyse the notion of dignity in legal sciences, especially in legal theory and philosophy of law. The author distinguishes autonomous and heteronomous version of the notion in question. The first way of conceiving human dignity, assumes that dignity, i.e. the worth of human life, is fully independent of social conditions in which people live their lives. This way of conceiving dignity epitomises Kant’s philosophy of moral autonomy as immanent trait of every human being. The second way of conceiving human dignity assumes that the worth of human life is fully dependent of social conditions in which people live their lives. Consequently, it is taken for granted that there are social conditions in which people can lose dignity as contingent trait of human being. In this case, in order to get back lost dignity, people ought to change social conditions by way of social revolution. This way of conceiving dignity epitomises Marxist philosophy of alienation. The author tends to point out, that a different way of conceiving dignity is followed by serious legal consequences.

Important for the scientific and philosophical mode of thought is the issue of circumstances that lead to the emergence of such type of reflection, different from traditional ways of explaining the reality by mythological beliefs. The spiritual search of a philosophising man turned out to be a reflection upon rule, upon the all-governing principle, i.e. both the natural world (cosmos) and the relations between people. This mode of thought evolved when a need and possibility for writing down (setting out) abstract legal norms (nomos) for the sake of certainty and verifiability of judgments arose. It was vital also for the trade and in particular for ownership (civil law), whose value was abstractly expressed in monetary money. These were the crucial factors in the initiation and development of scientific and philosophical (abstract) thought. Other fundamental conditions for the development of science and philosophy included liberty, equality and respect for otherness, as well as the non-orthodox character of beliefs (myths). These were ensured by the civic, cosmopolitan and economically developed polis, particularly the democratic one. Such conditions for the development of science and philosophy have proved to be universal and timeless.