"The author intends to present legal socialization - the concept of the sociology of law - which describes attitudes to norms, law and law enforcement institutions. For law to be effective, any individual in a given community needs to internalize a number of values and attitudes. The attitude to law will influence its application; its effectiveness will depend on the perspective adopted by the legal norm addressees who could either accept binding regulations or ignore them. An adequate legal policy helps construe legal norms in a manner to prevent costs of interventions which need to be taken when law is not convergent with social expectations." (author's abstract)
Traditionally, the quality of law is associated with observing certain principles of law making, the so-called principles of good legislation. Such a way of thinking, however, seems to be an over-simplification. Thus, the author indicates that the high-quality of legislation and the principles of good legislation are not the same. Law passed on the basis of good legislation procedures does not automatically result in the high-quality law, in particular, if one makes an assumption that the quality of law depends, above all, on legal certainty being ensured. The reflections presented here express an opinion on the immediate connection between the quality of law and the theory of law. In this perspective, thoughts on the quality of law resulted in an opinion how firmly the process of improvement in law quality is associated with the development of the theory of law. As regards the studies on the quality of law as a measure of legal certainty, three issues are pointed out in the material: 1. the quality of law from the point of view of its formation in reference to certain general social phenomena, 2. the quality of law relating to a person, 3. the quality of law in judicial activities.
The purpose of the article is to analyse the role of the public prosecutor's office as an institution that is specifically embedded in between certain elements of the political system, particularly between the executive and judiciary powers. For this reason, the public prosecutor's office can be regarded, together with courts, as an institution that aims to be actively involved in administering justice and an instrument of the executive power to guarantee internal security and to execute internal functions of the state. The public prosecutor's office, given its specific operation area, is expected to prosecute crimes effectively as well as safeguard the rule of law, which may be threatened by the infringing actions of not only individuals and criminal groups but also of officials and state institutions. Hence, with respect to the accountability of the public prosecutor's office, it should be more independent of the executive power which is subject to political rules. It appears, however, that separating it officially from the executive power does not have to lead automatically to the public prosecutor's office independence of political influence when other direct (the Prime Minister's and the Minister of Justice's authority over the Attorney General) and indirect mechanisms of prosecutors' political dependency (clientelism, politicisation and political bonds of prosecutors with politicians) exist.
This book explores the issue of environmentally-induced migrations from the point of view of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international refugee law and international law of statelessness. Last few years have become a period of unprecedented growth in the number of studies devoted to the forced migration caused by climate change. The book by professor Jane McAdam, published by Oxford University Press, differs significantly from previous studies in this area. The focus of the author became a state responsibility for the situation of climate-change induced displaced people with a particular focus on legal aspects of this problem. The basis of the author`s considerations are four particular areas of public international law: international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international refugee law and international law of statelessness. The issue of climate change-induced displacement is now becoming a growing challenge for public international law. The growing number of climate change migrants becomes a challenge for the international istitutions dealing with humanitarian assistance. Sea level rise become a factor of specific legal problems, such as climatic deterritorialization of the state, state succession on the new territory, the status of people forced to leave their country submerged under the waters of ocean (forced migrants?, refugees?, stateless people?, citizens of the former country continuing its status within a new territory?).
The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) is a descriptive formula used to reflect on asymmetries in economic development and consequential conflict of interests arising between various states of the world. These asymmetries and conflicts of interests have their reflection in these states' environmental policy mix - implemented domestically and pursued in the international context. The emerging map of mutual interests and dependences results from the consideration of external costs and benefits pertaining to respective national environmental policies. The EKC makes it evident that these costs and benefits cannot be evenly spread over all the states. This urges these states to adopt such interjurisdictional arrangements which are based on the identification of a possible multilateral exchange of economic policy favours and international financial transfers. Such an exchange, whenever occurs, has a generalized reciprocity formula. The function of such an arrangement is to make it possible for Nash equilibria to emerge, as such are most likely to produce the highest possible level of effectiveness in the long run. Such a behavior may not be cooperative in the short and medium term, yet the bottom-line cooperativeness is achieved because most states have similar if not the same long-term environmental goals.
Adjusting the legal status, and support policies for migrant workers is an issue on the agenda of international institutions for nearly a hundred years. The first efforts to protect foreign workers have been taken during the first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919. In the following decades ILO activities has led to the preparation of three international documents concerning this issue (non-binding ILO Convention No. 66 in 1939, and Convention No. 97 of 1949, and No. 143 of 1975). For many decades, the problem of the protection and assistance of migrant workers' rights was considered as a narrow issue of international labor law. Codification efforts, undertaken during seventies, has led to the adaptation of the UN document (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families) in 1990, and inclusion this issue into more general area of international human rights law. Despite this fact, and the existence of several categories of documents concerning migrant workers within Council of Europe, the European Union, and even ASEAN, the protection of migrant workers has never been effectively functioning system. The aim of this article is the analysis of the codification of that issue, and the main obstacles to consensus on the protection of migrant workers' rights. The state parties of the UN Convention contains primarily countries of origin of migrants (such as Mexico, Morocco and the Philippines). It seems, therefore, that despite 46 ratifications the, UN convention does not have a global character, and activities of its monitoring body (Committee on Migrant Workers-CMW) reflects primarily demands of sending countries. The article closely examines particularly controversial provisions of the ILO and UN documents from the point of view of current labour migrations and policies of sending and host countries.
The breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 30 years ago still has a substantial impact on the post-Yugoslav countries which proclaimed independence. Bearing in mind that the breakup also generated a military conflict, e.g. in Croatia, the restoration of Serbian-Croatian relations remains problematic. One of the challenges is passing a fair judgment on people responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established for this reason in particular. Ante Gotovina – a Croatian general, was one of those indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in connection with the military operation "Oluja" during which some heinous acts of crime took place. Gotovina played a clear and primary role in this operation, and therefore his actions were the main count of the indictment, firstly, for the prosecution and then for the Trial Chamber of ICTY. However, the sentence of 24 years imprisonment was never carried out following a successful appeal. The Appeals Chamber did not uphold the verdict of the Trial Chamber owing to a serious legal error and, consequently, it acquitted Gotovina of all the charges. This issue became yet another source of Serbian-Croatian conflict in connection with the most important people held responsible for the crimes committed in 1991-1995.
The European Union does not have an autonomous and self-standing public policy concerning the protection of landscape. Instead, it adopts fragmentary and incidental measures meant to protect landscape. These measures are adopted within the frameworks of other EU policies, most importantly the EU environmental policy as well as other policies which are integrated with it (such as agricultural policy or policy concerned with special planning). In all these realms, the EU shares its powers with its member states. In some important areas, such as e.g. the property regime, the member states retained their exclusive competences. This particular distribution of powers makes the implementation of the extra-EU international law instruments rather difficult and not sufficiently effective to produce a worthwhile impact. These obligations have a limited influence because most of them are obligations of "a diligent pursue" rather than "firm result". As such, they are unlikely to give rise to direct application of respective conventional provisions. Notwithstanding, their importance is much more pronounced in the area of legal reasoning, where even the EU or domestic measures have to be interpreted in the light of the EU and/or its member states' obligations arising from international conventions on landscape protection.
The creation of socio-economic policy is not, however, the main domain of the second chamber, especially in those systems, where the model of asymmetric bicameralism is implemented. The limitation of the process of creating economic policy is observable for example in the Czech Republic, where the Senate does not participate in passing of the budget act. Socio-economic policy of the state is not the main scope of interest of the Polish Senate either. The majority of legislative initiatives results in the creation of a new law and it does not raise the subject of socio-economic state policy directly. There are to be found, however, some initiatives that propose changes in the tax system, labour law, social care law or in the area of pensions and annuities. Owing to the legislative initiatives of the Senate accounting chambers and employers' associations were created. While analyzing the role of the Senate in socio-economic state policy the actions of Senate committees, especially of the Budget and Public Finance Committee, the National Economy Committee, the Family and Social Policy Committee, the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee are worth emphasizing. Those committees put forward amendments to the budget act, review the laws passed by the Sejm or international agreements concerning socio-economic policy. Some of the effects of the Polish Senate's committee work is, among many, proposing by the Budget and Public Finance Committee, on behalf of the Senate, a number of amendments to consequent budget acts. It should be stressed, however, that the Senate undermines its role in the field of socio-economic policy. It takes, so to say, additional measures to other activities. A lack of long-term and comprehensive programmes can be seen in those actions. The Senate uses the instruments of government, nevertheless, it does so in moderation.
The monography provides a comparative analysis of the constitutional review bodies' activities, their status and efficiency in different Post-Soviet States. It deals with the complex description of the constitutional provisions' compliance, the problems of legal mechanisms and stability, evolution of the local legislation. In this book the authors provide a detailed report of the constitutional review institutions' problems in the process of ensuring its legislative position. In this context we find in the research a description of the legal, political risks of the constitutional control in Post-Soviet States, its social perception and the predictability of its legal systems' development. This work integrates the unique structure of presentation and research materials. By the reflection of this type the authors lay the base for continuing further researches of constitutional review development dynamics in the countries of the region.
There is no law making without law writing. Creating an act of law means organizing (coding) a rule into a strictly designed form. That form and the knowledge of coding allows a reader to extract rules from statues. The knowledge necessary for law writing includes but is not limited to the following elements of acts of law: statues, directives, editing, text structure, rules for amending and unifying etc. Development of legislative techniques and quality control in law writing are necessary to provide high quality law that citizens can trust.
The European Union currently operates three types of competence: exclusive, shared and supporting (complementary and harmonization). For each country, it is very important autonomous power of taxation and the ensuing independence in shaping tax policy. Countries acceding to the European Union, however, have to reckon with the fact that 80 Artur Kuś Studia z Polityki Publicznej since joining will not have a kind of monopoly on the creation of a fully independent and autonomous tax regulations. EU tax law is primarily the proper functioning of the EU internal market. The aim of the tax legislation is mainly provide income for the state. Thus, the main feature of the national tax law is fiscal function and the EU's - the proper functioning of the internal market. EU tax law in the broad sense (sensu largo) is the collection of EU law (primary and secondary) concerning and affecting the tax law of the Member States. EU tax law in the strict sense (sensu stricto) is a set of rules while EU law relating to and used directly in the tax law of the Member States of the EU. In the simplest terms it can be assumed that these are the rules relating to the taxation mainly indirect taxes.
The aim of the paper is to present ramifi cations in the field of family law, inheritance law and tax law which arise from the lack of recognition of registered partnerships and same-sex marriages in certain European Union Member States, such as Poland. The lack of recognition is commonly perceived as discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, but the emphasis is usually placed on its consequences concerning human rights. In this article, the author focused on discriminatory aspects in the area of family life and personal taxation. A lack of appropriate provisions in domestic law produces negative effects affecting taxation obligations for cross-border families that concluded their marriages or partnerships abroad but cannot benefi t from these institutions in certain EU Member States such as Poland. For the purpose of determining discriminatory aspects, the author analysed the domestic rules differentiating couples living in a marriage and couples not possessing the right to marry. Due to lack of case-law on tax and inheritance discrimination resulting from sexual orientation, relevant case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union have been recalled, revealing possible violations of fundamental freedoms, including free movement of persons.
The article aims to analyze changes in public (administrative) law, including the introduction of a new act of law (the so-called "Law 2.0") on higher education and science in 2018 in Poland. Together with the accompanying introductory law and executive acts, Law 2.0 established not only a new legal regime, but also forced institutional changes, that will be analysed in the second part of this article. In addition to the analysis, the article is also presents author's conclusions de lege lata and de lege ferenda.
