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.

The act of labelling, typical of the contemporary discourse on constitutionalism, has given rise to a thick jungle of “adjectival constitutionalisms”, reaching beyond the classic liberal paradigm. The formulated concepts aim at specifying the changes taking place in public law and in its political surrounding. The discourse on the notion of constitutionalism is a piece of a greater puzzle – the problem of the political. The purpose of this paper is to compare the two titular notions: constitutionalism and the political. The first part of the paper addresses the problem of methodological inconsistencies in the modern-day analysis of the concept of constitutionalism. The second part raises the controversies around the essence of constitutionalism and their fundamental significance to the theoretical legitimisation of alternatives to the concept of legal and liberal onstitutionalism (the concepts of the essence of constitutionalism as limitation of power, statically understood self-establishment – a founding myth, and dynamically understood self-establishment). Part three discusses the notion of the political as a criterion of division of the said concepts of constitutionalism.

The aim of the article is to analyse the problem of the political nature of judicial decisions through a reconstruction of the ways of interpreting the relationship between law and political values in the contemporary philosophical-legal discourse. The considered problem has been presented from the perspective of such a concept of law that recognises law as a practice of a certain political community. The author attempts to reconstruct the contemporary understanding of the political nature of law viewed as rejecting the voluntarist and individualist paradigms and adopting the phronetic and community paradigms instead.

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.

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest podjęcie refleksji nad presupozycjami ontologicznymi krytycznej nauki o prawie (prawoznawstwa krytycznego), rozumianymi jako zbiór założeń z zakresu ontologii społecznej, wyznaczających tożsamość tej formy ogólnej refleksji nad prawem. Artykuł postuluje wyróżnienie czterech takich założeń: założenie o polityczności świata społecznego, założenie o społecznym tworzeniu świata społecznego, założenie o paninterpretacjonizmie, założenie o istnieniu wspólnot interpretacyjnych.