This article provides only a small contribution to the inevitable scholarly discussion on whether excluding the primacy of the literal rule in favour of the priority of a pro-EU teleological interpretation in the judicial and administrative applications of Polish tax law is really reasonable. Firstly, this article sets out to discuss the stages of the transposition of the concept of a household from EU legislation into the provisions of the Excise Duty Act. Secondly, it presents the evolution in the lines of the interpretation of this term as used by tax authorities and national courts. Thirdly, it demonstrates the negative legal and fiscal consequences that are caused in practice by the definition of this term as framed by the Polish legislator.

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.

The problems of the Russian transformation are strongly related to the policy model adopted by the chief financial regulator, which in the case of this article is the Central Bank of Russia. It is argued here that the policy followed by the CBR is obsolete and rooted in the 1990s, and not up to date with the needs of the current economic conditions. These conditions are specific only to Russia and deserve the name of a “small cold war”. The CBR continues to pursue a liberalisation policy based on concepts borrowed from the West. Their core is a complete liberalisation of the international currency flows, at the expense of protecting the domestic market from international speculative capital, and at the price of encouraging capital flow away from Russia. At the same time this policy has managed to discourage long term domestic investments.

The age of a human being is a common research topic in many branches. This topic is also addressed by the legal theory. Age categories also functioned in Roman law, determining the legal position of a person. In this article, the non-judicial sources which concerned the division of human life are analyzed. Consequently, it has been possible to determine that in ancient Rome, there were several theories concerning this matter. The division of life into three, four, five, six or seven stages was very popular. Each theory has different justifications and various arguments. Among those, we can distinguish medical, psychological, numerical and also military-administrative arguments.

Rule of law is one of the most fundamental values of the European Union and the issues related thereto have become one of the top priorities not only in the EU agenda but also in the EU policies of most of the Member States, including Sweden. This is due to the increasing integration, the growing dependence of the functioning of the entire European Union on the way how the system of justice works in different Member States, and the concern over the condition of the rule of law in these Member States. In recent years, the European Union has been making use of some older instruments, whose aim is to control and improve the observance of the rule of law (including Art. 7 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), and has adopted some new solutions too – the European rule of law mechanism and the regulation regarding rule of law conditionality, related to the new EU budget. The need to work out effective procedures to determine the condition of the rule of law and to uphold the main standards of the system of justice in all EU Member States is becoming more and more urgent and remains one of the greatest challenges faced by the European Union to be dealt with by the Swedish government.

The 2018 amendment of the Polish Electoral Code established the institution of electoral officials, who replaced the institution of electoral plenipotentiaries, existing since 1998. One of the main differences between the two institutions is that electoral officials may not work at commune offices in charge of preparing and holding election in the area of their jurisdiction. The aim of the adopted solution was to isolate local government administration from the election process. The article offers a critical analysis of the institution of electoral officials. The subject matter of the discussion is both the legal regulation and the conclusions drawn from the examination of the institution in question, conducted by the Stefan Batory Foundation after the end of the 2018 local government elections, when the electoral officials fulfilled their statutory duty for the first time. The discussion leads to the conclusion that the establishment of the institution of electoral officials was not well thought out, and actually took place without appropriate consultation. The provisions of the Electoral Code are often vague. They have not been clarified to a sufficient extent in the resolutions adopted by the National Electoral Commission either. It is reasonable to have electoral officials appointed for a six-year term of office by the Head of the National Electoral Office. What is surprising, however, is that electoral officials may run for an office during elections taking place in a constituency outside of their area of activity as well as engage in election cam paigns – except for their own campaigns – while they should remain completely impartial during the election. The vague status of electoral officials and of the principles of their remuneration made it very difficult to attract individuals willing to perform this function. The headcount originally assumed had to be reduced by half; now it is 2,600. It is also necessary to reconsider the number of electoral officials assigned to individual communes. A major flaw of the adopted regulation is the lack of a clear division of duties and responsibilities between electoral official and communes. All this casts a bad light on the institution of electoral officials. It is argued that they were poorly prepared to perform the duties they were entrusted with. They also lacked the necessary theoretical knowledge and were not familiar with local conditions and constraints. Therefore, instead of helping, they made the work of commune officials only harder. But the call for dissolving the institution altogether is not legitimate. It is necessary to return to the previous solution, where the electoral officials in a commune were the officials working at commune offices, regular employees of these basic local government units. In communes with larger populations, there may be even more such officials. It is essential to reinforce the status of electoral officials, which is why it is important to clearly definthe nature of their relationships with the commune heads (town/city mayors) as well as to strengthen their position and grant them authority in the field of duties carried out as part of elections and referenda over other commune officials. It is also requisite to appoint them for terms of office of a particular number of years, and remunerate them in fixed monthly amounts – with the amounts increased in periods of preparing and holding elections or referenda. Only this way will it be possible to have a proper Electoral Official Service composed of professional commune officials specialising in organising and holding elections and referenda.

The article analyzes the idea of the so-called “golden visas” or the possibility of purchasing citizenship or permanent residency offered by some countries. There are numerous controversies about this solution, and the defenders and opponents have many rguments for and against it. Arguments presented in the article confirm that at this stage, it is not possible to abandon this solution. However, it is possible to see problems arising from the existence of this institution and to introduce appropriate safeguards so that possible negative effects are minimized.

The Act on Higher Education and Science of 2018 considerably restricts the internal autonomy of universities. Management is vested in rectors and university boards while neglecting the role of faculties, which, if established in the first place, have been reduced to entities of no significance. The rector, as the exclusive managerial body of an institution, and the university board, representing mainly external stakeholders, as a body supervising its economy, have been vested with such an ex-tensive authority that this may result in hindering the development of multiple academic disciplines, especially those in the area of the humanities, but also in the field of social studies in many cases.

The quality of education in higher education concerns both the process of education and higher education as a good produced as a result of education processes. In the last several dozen years, the quality of education has become a major issue dealt with as part of public policy in the area of higher education both in the dimension of particular countries participating in the Bologna Process, and in the European Higher Education Area. As a result, social sciences have shown more interest in education processes in higher education, with managing the quality of education becoming one of the ideas central to the matter. Studies into the quality of education are conducted nowadays by representatives of many social sciences, adopting many different research approaches. The research approach proposed in this article refers to the organisational game concept and draws on the assumptions and the notional apparatus of the so-called decision-making approach as regards making public decisions. A particular assumption that has been made is that the activity of entities involved in the process of education and performing different roles therein (public authorities, higher education institutions and their associations, accreditation agencies and other institutions assessing the quality of higher education, the so-called stakeholders of higher education institutions) can be described and explained as decisions of players playing multiplayer and multilevel games for the organisation of education processes and for higher education. Games for education processes and for higher education are currently played not only in the hierarchical structure of the state, but also in a broader organisational perspective, which is the European Higher Education Area. Managing the quality of education in this area is not controlled top-down, and involves mainly arranging some binding and guiding institutional solutions which are to lead to an increased competitiveness of education processes and higher education offered by European higher education institutions.

Sweden’s Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 (Tryckfrihetsförordningen), the world’s very first legislation supporting freedom of the press and freedom of information, is part of the country’s constitution and grants today the widest possible public access to official documents. It forms the basis of the traditional Swedish right known as The Principle of Public Access to Official Documents (offentlighetsprincipen) and plays a crucial role not only in providing the right to access public documents, but is also indispensable in order to uphold public accountability of government and state officials. Exercising the widest possible transparency contributes to the proper functioning of the liberal democratic system, while curtailing corruption and abuse. Developing transparency and shaping an open society promotes greater participation of citizens in the society, encourages confidence in the state – an essential element in building an effective state that is to serve its owners, the citizens – as well as benefits the functioning of the rule of law and increases the quality of democracy.