Volume 59 (2019): Issue 1 (September 2019)

The concept of hermeneutic science is outlined by Habermas as a reflection within the ordinary language, addressed to the dialogic dimension of intersubjective recognition and connected to the juridical guarantee. The guarantee function fulfilled by the discursive agreement towards every real dialogue is obvious: it indicates the main reference point for the regulation and coordination of social action, tracing a line of demarcation between being and having to be, facts and norms. Speech, communicative agreement and legal guarantee are mutually qualified terms where the public discussion of institutional issues makes it possible to define the normative validity as non-assimilatory generality, placed beyond any populistic yearning, tracing a line of demarcation between law and power. The idea of deliberative democracy expresses the relationship and distinction between the universalism of rights and the factuality of the norm issuing, between the idea of good and the idea of right, in order to support democratic decision-making legitimacy. Combining the reasons of the markets with those of civil solidarity, through independent forms of regulation both from the obsolete state sovereignties and from the traditional international perspectives, represents a primary challenge of the Habermasian theory where the critical role of the rational public sphere appears fundamental.

The paper aims to explore the phenomenon of the spread in democracy of new powers – produced by inexhaustible technological developments – from the perspective of the philosophy of Institutions. It traces the original idea of democracy, in which the «government of the people» arises from the conversion of natural liberty into social and political liberty, dwells on the political and juridical meaning of authority, analyses the traditional instruments used to condition human opinions and behaviours, and reconstructs – in light of this itinerary – the functioning and new grammar of the digital order. What opens before us is a fluid and disorganized scenario, dominated by digital systems, algorithms and artificial intelligence, that draws the attention of philosophers and sociologists, jurists and scholars of language and of anthropology. The old single order, outlined by the political and juridical machine of the modern State – which, through an aloof and solemn language, aimed to impart regularity to human behaviour and to give society direction – is replaced by multifarious models of order, each of which is generated by its own logic, practices, and autonomous control techniques. Under the omnipotence of technology, concepts such as authority, liberty, truth and power undergo a vortex of semantic transformations that penetrate a new symbolic space into human reasoning and actions.

It has been claimed that to fully understand the law, one must know the language of normative texts and the relevant rules governing its use. It usually means that normative texts do not seem to be comprehensible enough to persons without formal legal training. In an on-going research project, we are focusing on the process of writing texts of legal regulations, conducting semi-structured interviews with those involved in drafting normative texts. In this paper, we focus on lawyers as a speech community of legal language speakers and we discuss why and to what extent this speech community may be considered an elite in a society. We show that competent usage of special – legal – language in regulating the whole society may help create a special group of persons wielding an important segment of cultural capital: the knowledge of legal language, and, in consequence, competent knowledge of law. Given the fact that this language is used to exercise (legal) power in a society, lawyers appear to be in the advantageous position of an elite. We argue that those who draft new legal texts reproduce writing rules and customs, constantly re-creating legal language as a language mostly incomprehensible to a non-competent speaker, and, in consequence, creating lawyers as an elite speech community.

Specific historical and linguistic circumstances gave way to a Swiss original concept of a multilingual state as the nation of the will. The discussion concerns problems inherent to the unity-in-diversity philosophy and the proportional representation of national languages within the framework of the Swiss constitution, including the legislation protecting language and the language principles obtaining in Switzerland. Drawing on the language ideology studies, this paper shows how the linguistic diversity is designed on the administrative level and what provisions have been made to maintain multilingualism. The discussion also addresses and concludes on the ever timely questions of diversity, pluralism and intergroup cooperation fostered by the Swiss political and social culture.

The objective of the paper is to present the differences in the grounds of appeal and the appeal proceedings against judgments issued by a court composed of representatives of the public in a criminal trial at first instance. At present, citizens are allowed to adjudicate most often in one of three forms: persons adjudicating independently without the participation of a professional factor, who are not professionals in the field of law and criminal procedure (e.g. judges of the peace in the common law system); a jury composed of citizens and adjudicating mostly on guilt of the accused; or lay judges adjudicating all aspects of the case in one panel together with professional judges. However, the participation of laymen in adjudication is not a prevailing rule. Many countries legal systems do not allow the citizens to co-decide in criminal cases. The paper also indicates the arguments for the democratization of the judiciary through a wider admission of citizens to participate in criminal justice. This issue has been examined on the background of three aspects of democracy: representative, deliberative and participatory.

The Baltic States – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – are democratic states of law that respect human rights. As members of the Council of Europe, they implemented into domestic law the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (known as the European Convention on Human Rights) – an international document for the universal protection of human rights adopted by the Council of Europe. The aim of the paper is to analyze whether and to what extent did Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian citizens file individual complaints to the European Court of Human Rights over the past thirteen years (2006–2018). The paper is to answer the question if the Baltic Sates’ systems of human rights protection are effective. One of the indicators of effectiveness is the number of complaints brought from the Baltic States to the ECtHR in relation to the number of inhabitants and also in comparison with the total number of complaints from the 47 member states of the Council of Europe as whole. The analysis will cover statistics on the number of judgments in Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian cases before the Court in Strasbourg issued between 2006 and 2018. This will be helpful in determining the degree and the type of violations by the Baltic States of the human rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

The objective of the paper is to present the significance of general rules of tax law resulting from the new draft tax ordinance for the taxpayer’s situation. The aim of this paper is to present a general overview of the newly introduced rules of tax law. This study may be the basis for further studies in the field of subject principles. The analysis covered the rules referring to: support of the taxpayer in fulfilling tax obligations, actions of tax authorities in a way that inspires taxpayer’s trust, equal treatment of taxpayers, presumption of the taxpayer’s honesty, not abandoning the established practice of resolving cases in the same factual and legal state. Within the framework of this paper, research hypotheses concerning the impact of these rules on the legal situation of the taxpayer have been positively verified. These rules will have an impact on the improvement of the taxpayer’s situation, which has to face the complicated legal environment. This environment forms the complex tax law system, as well as the intricate and complicated language used by the legislator in making tax law regulations in Poland. This confirms the need to introduce changes resulting from the new draft tax ordinance.

In the debate on the European Union’s problems, the concept of “democracy deficit” has been present from its very beginning. This term is applied in a quite vast manner and, apart from the asymmetry of the relation between the European Parliament and the Council, it also concerns the overly limited role of national parliaments in the European Union. In this regard, inadequacy in the national position of individual parliaments is observed. On the other hand, it is necessary to emphasise their uneven activity on their European aspirations. At the time when the European dispute on the rule of law in Poland has polarized attitudes and language in statements on both sides – despite irresponsible trends – it is worth to examine the participation of national parliaments (including the Polish parliament) in the European inter-parliamentary dialogue and, consequently, to determine whether and how its constructive impact on the European Union and its law functions.

Marketing communication in modern times is similar to the propaganda model, i.e. persuasive communication in all possible fields of exploitation. The last three decades in Central and Eastern Europe constituted a time of transformation in many areas of social, political and economic life. Thanks to immanent changes depending on the economic situation and the clash of demand and supply, it was possible to create functional models in three selected time intervals distinguished by the author (socialism, transformational period and capitalism). The use of functional models gives the opportunity to indicate how many changes have taken place in such a short period of time both in terms of consumer mentality and in satisfying the needs of producers. The basis for the application of this type of operationalization of the idea is the statement that “the functional model consists in mapping the functioning of a given system. It should give an idea of the functions and processes taking place in a given system” (Sabryła, Trzciniecki 1986). The purpose of this article is also to start a discussion on contemporary models of product communication.

This paper is a reflection on the legitimacy of commonly accepted opposition of the notions of “capitalism” and “socialism”. The leading thesis is that although they can be considered as antinomies, their real referents should not be treated analogously. Capitalism, as understood by its very name, emerged in the second half of the 19th century and evolved constantly from this moment, often changing its main features. Socialism, in contrast, was created as a notion opposing the capitalistic reality of the 19^th century. Yet it never really existed in this form. The actual economic system, referred to as “socialism”, was in fact a hybrid of capitalism and neo-feudal bureaucracy.

Numerous authors indicate that the influence of academic education extends beyond the growth of specialized knowledge gained by the graduates. Scholars are trying to identify and examine the potential impact of higher learning on students’ attitudes and choices. One of the dimensions considered by the researchers is the effect of university training on students’ moral choices. Our paper attempts to identify differences between the students’ declared moral choices and their majors (fields of studies). Working with a sample of university students of Economics and Sociology (N = 181), and using three variants of the Trolley Problem, the subjects’ responses are used to identify the similarities and differences between their choices. The participants were asked to respond to three hypothetical situations regarding a runaway trolley. Their decision in the first scenario could save a person’s life or let her be run over by the trolley. In the second scenario, their decision could either let one person die and save five lives or save one life and let five people be killed. These two scenarios required pulling a lever to switch the trolley from one track to another. The third scenario requires pushing an obese person in front of the runaway trolley to stop it from killing five persons. As expected, we found a significant difference between the two groups (the economists and the sociologists) in the case of our third scenario, however, we found no evidence supporting the indoctrination hypothesis. We conclude that the existing differences between the choices made by the future economists and sociologists may support the preselection hypothesis.

Nowadays, creativity has become one of the most important determinants of the development of modern economy. In it lies the potential for economic success not only of entire regions, but above all of business entities. Although creativity is difficult to define, it more frequently becomes the subject of scholarly considerations. In this study, an attempt was made to explore the climate for creativity because it determines the development of creativity and creative attitudes in creative sectors. The main research goal was to show the importance and pattern of the determinants creating a climate conducive to creativity and its impact on the development of creative industries. The method of the study was a critical analysis of the source literature and the author’s own research. The aim of the work became the basis for formulating the following research hypothesis: recognising the components constituting a pattern of the climate conducive to creativity in the city will enable better development of entities included in the creative sector. In order to achieve the set goal and verify the research hypothesis, quantitative and qualitative research was carried out among representatives of creative professions employed in the creative sectors.

The purpose of the considerations is to present and systematise barriers to creating innovation in the Polish economy in 2012–2016. The desk research was based on the results of Community Innovation Surveys (CIS 2012 and CIS 2014), thematic studies of the Central Statistical Office and a report from the Infuture hatalska foresight institute. The use of statistical and comparative analysis in conjunction with the review of the literature on innovation barriers leads to the conclusion that Polish enterprises recognise the lack of financial resources as a major barrier to creating innovation, while non-financial barriers are much less important. The marginal treatment of non-financial barriers is a reversal of attitudes and directions of activities that are undertaken in the field of creating innovation in highly developed countries.

We start from the assumption that the main problem, and at the same time the goal, is socio-economic development. We also assume that this pursuit is universal, development is the ambition of entities at all levels of aggregation, development is a desire of each country, as well as of business entities and individuals. From the other side, the governments create conditions for entities at the microeconomic level which generate additional value, that is, contribute to the creation of this development. Peculiar to them they are developmental paths. That’s why, the main hypothesis of this article, as stating that the choice of economic policy financed by excessive public debt does not, in the long run, serve well real socio-economic development.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, the vast majority of these countries had serious problems with public debt. These problems already had their history and were so serious that some efforts to discipline the forum of this group appeared. It is, in a sense, natural in the sense that integration itself is heading to a high degree of coordination and to the unification of all economic policies. The picture of public finances of the European Union does not look good despite the fact that this group can boast a long history of making efforts to control and monitor the budgets of its member states. Moreover, one can even talk about a certain intensification of this process, especially with respect to the euro area countries, but we still can not say that satisfactory results have been achieved.

One of the major objectives in a democratic state is ensuring health security of the citizens including combating epidemic diseases. The subject matter of this article is the presentation and analysis of legal regulations regarding preventive vaccination in Poland, in particular the aspect of imposing a legal obligation and restricting parents’ right to express consent for medical intervention. The reflections made herein are aimed at finding an answer to the question whether the adopted legal solutions are admissible in a democratic state with regard to ensuring health security. The purpose of the analysis is also to assess whether the abovementioned legal regulations have been formulated in a clear way and do not raise interpretation doubts and, consequently, whether they are comprehensible to the parents obliged to comply with them.

As it follows from analysis of the legal provisions, parents must not refuse to subject a child to obligatory preventive vaccination and their consent is not required by law, both as regards the medical qualifying examination to exclude contraindications to performing vaccination and the vaccination itself. It is a legal obligation, from which exemption is only possible on grounds of certain medical conditions that would render vaccination inadvisable.

The legal provisions that concern obligatory preventive vaccination in Poland, including in particular those referring to its enforceability, have not been formulated in a way that is sufficiently comprehensible to parents who are under the obligation of complying with them, irrespective of the fact that the language of the provisions of law should be clear and raise no interpretative doubts.

In a democratic state the protection of public health against epidemic hazards justifies the implementation of legal solutions that restrict an individual’s freedom of self-determination, thus limiting the right of patients or their statutory representatives to grant or refuse consent for a medical intervention in the form of preventive vaccination – the purpose of this legal solution being to prioritize the safeguarding of state health security.

It is vitally important to engage in a social dialogue with the purpose of convincing the public of the need for vaccination, its significance and its implementation for the better good.