Judges and Democracy. The Dispute about “the Power of Vigilance” Cover Image

Sędziowie a demokracja. Spór o „władzę czuwania”
Judges and Democracy. The Dispute about “the Power of Vigilance”

Author(s): Stanisław Jędrczak
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Political Theory, Governance
Published by: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN
Keywords: judicature; Roussonian democratism; meliorism; legal objectivism; leftism; Jeffersonian democratism; non-meliorism;

Summary/Abstract: The article has two purposes: the argumentative one, which is to present the problem of the authority of judges in democracy, and the argumentative and historical one, which is to outline Bogusław Wolniewicz’s philosophy of politics. The theoretical approach to the title issue has become a necessity after the Polish constitutional crisis, which questioned the so-called myth of the non-political character of judicature in 2015. In the on-going discussion, opposite positions have been formulated. They can be referred to as relativism and objectivism (the latter proclaims judicial apoliticality in the personal, jurisprudential and ideological sense). Advocating the legal relativism, I aim to bring out the roots of objectivism that lead us to the Roussonian democratism (contrasted with the Jeffersonian one).

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 25
  • Page Range: 131-160
  • Page Count: 30
  • Language: Polish