Kryzys COVID-19 w Rumunii: hipoteza dotycząca populizmu penalnego i kultury prawnej

In this paper I seek to present a working hypothesis to be eventually developed in a future contribution, namely that the COVID-19 crisis exposed some problematic behaviours evocative of an authoritarian ethos on the part of both public authorities and citizens which suggest that a penal populist attitude might now be part or even embedded in the Romanian legal culture. Specifically, I will organize this contribution as follows: in the first part, I will briefly describe Romania’s reaction (as evidenced both in the official measures taken and the attitude of citizens) to the first wave of the pandemic focusing on the role of penal and military means; I shall qualify this reaction as containing some traces of penal populism. In the second part I shall offer a tentative mapping of the factors that can explain this problematic cultural reaction. Importantly, among these I include the successful fight against corruption with the consequence that what appears to have very much consolidated the rule of law in post-1989 Romania could be shown to have had the unintended and paradoxical effect of undermining the very same ideal.W niniejszym artykule staram się przedstawić hipotezę roboczą, która zostanie ostatecznie rozwinięta w przyszłym opracowaniu, a mianowicie, że kryzys COVID-19 ujawnił pewne problematyczne zachowania wskazujące na etos autorytarny zarówno po stronie władz publicznych, jak i obywateli, co sugeruje, że postawa populistyczna w dziedzinie prawa karnego może być obecnie częścią lub nawet elementem rumuńskiej kultury prawnej. W pierwszej części krótko opiszę reakcję Rumunii (przejawiającą się zarówno w podjętych oficjalnych środkach, jak i postawie obywateli) na pierwszą falę pandemii, skupiając się na roli środków karnych i wojskowych; zakwalifikuję tę reakcję jako zawierającą pewne ślady populizmu penalnego. W drugiej części zaproponuję wstępną mapę czynników, które mogą wyjaśnić tę problematyczną reakcję kulturową. Co ważne, zaliczam do nich udaną walkę z korupcją, której konsekwencją jest to, że to, co wydaje się bardzo umacniać rządy prawa w Rumunii po 1989 roku, może mieć też niezamierzony i paradoksalny skutek w postaci podważenia tegoż ideału

What Kind of Critique for Central and Eastern European Legal Studies? Comparison as One of the Answers

This paper seeks to emphasize the merits of comparative law as a critical legal enterprise. For this purpose, it first provides a brief overview of the various forms of critique that have been advocated in the field of comparative law. Second, it discusses four epistemological concerns as regards legal comparison that are meant to orient comparatists towards a critical mode of comparative reasoning. While most of the remarks comprised in this contribution apply to legal comparisons in general, a few observations shall be made with specific reference to the stakes and limits of legal comparisons in Central and Eastern Europe

Should the European Court of Justice Develop a Political Question Doctrine?

This paper comparatively investigates the role of the so-called political question doctrine in contemporary adjudication. Equally hailed and criticized, the doctrine is an indirect discussion on the perennial question of the border between law and politics. Thus, this contribution firstly seeks to illustrate the idiosyncratic context in which the political question doctrine operates and to ascertain the instability of its meaning, as well as its evolving content over time. Second, this paper examines the scholarly debates that surround the existence of a political question doctrine in the practice of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), as well as the (in) desirability of an express articulation of the doctrine by the ECJ. This study is therefore imagined as an implicit comparison: the theoretical insights drawn from several common law jurisdictions inform the approach to EU law, while, in turn, the EU example is employed as a background against which to consider and revisit some of the doctrine’s limits and possibly even perils. Without attempting to provide a taxonomy of cases in which “political question” types of arguments may arise before the ECJ, this paper identifies – mostly through doctrinal study –examples of alternative strategies or concepts so far employed by the Court in order to deal with issues generally defined as “political”. Finally, this contribution weighs some of the advantages and disadvantages that the adoption of the doctrine would bring in practice, both in light of the Court’s position within the institutional system, and of the specific features of the EU’s legal construction as a whole

For an undisciplined comparison of laws

En tant que discipline universitaire, le droit comparé fabrique sa connaissance selon les principes d’un paradigme cognitif et méthodologique qui tend à reléguer au-delà des frontières disciplinaires, et dès lors dans l’indiscipline, toute recherche ne relevant pas du cadre de travail épistémologique ayant été imposé par la tradition. La pensée juridique comparative orthodoxe privilégie, entre autres postulats, l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’analyse juridique se révèle à ce point spécifique que le juriste ne pourrait utilement s’autoriser le recours à d’autres disciplines. Néanmoins, cette approche exclusive a été remise en cause par les comparatistes hétérodoxes qui estiment que seule une étude interdisciplinaire sensible à l’ancrage culturel du droit peut conduire à une meilleure appréciation des enjeux de la comparaison à l’heure de la globalisation. Etant donné qu’il n’existe pas encore d’analyse détaillée portant sur l’interdisciplinarité dans le domaine de la comparaison des droits, cette thèse propose , tout d’abord, dévaluer la pertinence d’une démarche située au carrefour des savoirs. Ensuite, cette réflexion se donne pour objectif de déterminer si l’agir interdisciplinaire doit s’inscrire dans une matrice méthodologique. Enfin, le comparatiste ne saurait ignorer la question des écueils d’un traitement interdisciplinaire des droits qu’il compare, tant sur le plan psychologiste que conceptuel. Somme toute, il s’agit de prendre la mesure des avantages mais aussi des limites d’une comparaison des droits interdisciplinaires. Surtout, il y a lieu, en fin de compte, de défendre cette approche, c’est-à-dire de soutenir l’idée d’une comparaison des droits indisciplinée.As an academic discipline, comparative law fabricates its own knowledge pursuant to the dictates of a methodological and cognitive paradigm, which tends to relegate beyond disciplinary boundaries any scholarly undertaking not accounting for the epistemological framing that has traditionally obtained. Hence, contemporary orthodox comparative legal thought seems to favour, along with other postulates, the assumption that legal analysis is so specific that it cannot usefully allow for knowledge contributions deemed by legal scholars themselves to belong to other academic disciplines. However, heterodox comparative lawyers have challenged this exclusive perspective considering that only an interdisciplinary analysis attentive to law’s cultural embeddedness is conducive to an enhanced apprehension of the stakes involved within comparative research in the age of globalization. Given that there is no comprehensive study concerning the place of interdisciplinarity in comparative legal studies, this dissertation seeks to evaluate relevance of such an approach with specific reference to the work of comparative lawyers. In particular, this argument asks whether interdisciplinary thinking needs to be framed according to a given methodological matrix. Moreover, because the comparatist cannot ignore the pitfalls of an interdisciplinarity treatment of the laws she compares, whether from a psychological or conceptual standpoint, this text considers the limits of an interdisciplinary comparison of laws in addition to what it regards as its advantages. Ultimately, though, this dissertation defends an interdisciplinary approach, that is, it promotes an undisciplined comparison of laws

A call to impossibility : the methodology of interpretation at the European Court of Justice and the PSPP ruling

Published online: 30 November 2021This article addresses the use of interpretative methods in the practice of the European Court of Justice. It first discusses the multifaceted context in which the Court operates, and then analyses each of the Court's traditional methods of interpretation separately. Drawing a distinction between the Court's judges and its Advocates General, it shows that there are important limits to how constraining interpretative methods can be. The article also illustrates the potential complications that can arise from the act of ascribing to the process of judicial interpretation a greater role than it can, in fact, assume. In this sense, the German Federal Constitutional Court's ruling regarding the powers of the European Central Bank (known as the PSPP decision) is analysed from the perspective of the methodological challenges it raises

Comparative Animal Law!

This contribution argues in favour of the synergy between two fields: animal law and comparative law. Comparative law will allow for the development and improvement of animal law. Animal law, for its part, can move comparative law beyond the narrow confines of its traditional research agenda. The paper highlights a select number of key issues that are particularly relevant for undertaking serious comparative legal research with respect to animals

Rethinking Comparative Law

Given globalization, transnationalism and postcolonialism, not to mention the Europeanization of laws, every law student and every lawyer is bound to encounter foreign law in the course of her or his professional life. Increasingly, legislators show themselves open to the influence of foreign legal ideas in the legislative process. Also, many appellate courts are prepared to refer to foreign law in their opinions. At least as importantly perhaps, private parties often enter into legal arrangements, such as contracts or wills, featuring a foreign dimension. In sum, nowadays, foreign law is everywhere and cannot be circumvented. Over the past decades, the field commonly known as ‘comparative law’, which broadly speaking addresses engagement with foreign law and the comparison of laws, has significantly expanded. The multiplication of journals, the proliferation of scholarship and the creation of courses or summer schools specifically devoted to comparative law attest to the increasing popularity of comparative law. Within the Western legal tradition, the dominant position in comparative law has long been assumed by Konrad Zweigert and Hein Kötz, two widely influential German legal scholars. For over four decades, Zweigert and Kötz’s textbook, Introduction to Comparative Law, transl. by Tony Weir, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), has governed much of the research undertaken in the field of comparative law and has defined, politically and otherwise, what kind of comparative legal research is to be regarded as ‘good comparison’. Their self-styled ‘functionalist’ method, grounded on a black-letter approach to law, has proved particularly authoritative. In recent years, however, a minority of authors have mobilised cultural studies as well as economic, literary and philosophical theories with a view to highlighting the shortcomings of orthodox comparative legal theory. Undoubtedly, the application of such perspectives to the field of comparative law offers fresh and crucial insights into the theory and practice of comparative law.Problematically, though, even the most recent critical literature in the field still fails to address a certain number of key issues arising in comparative law. For example, the task of the comparatist is to explain, by making use of her or his language, a foreign law usually formulated in a different language. Specifically, the comparatist is frequently asked to translate various kinds of legal texts, such as treaties, statutes, judicial decisions, contracts and scholarship from one language into another. Very often, the active or passive knowledge of a foreign legal language and culture is regarded as a sufficient condition for the translation of foreign legal materials. Indeed, the vast majority of comparatists either ignore or underestimate the obstacles standing in the way of every attempt at translation even as, within translation studies, specialists have long acknowledged that, properly speaking, translation is impossible or, at any rate, that translation effectively means transformation. In a context where the question of understanding proves of the utmost importance to lawyers working on the international scene the matter of the feasibility of translation needs to be probed, whether theoretically (can it be done?) or practically (how to do it?). This co-authored book wishes to rethink comparative law by providing both students and lawyers with the intellectual equipment allowing them to approach foreign law in a meaningful way. The book addresses a range of topics illustrating the contemporary relevance of comparative law. Further, it heightens sensitization to the singularity of foreign legal cultures and it invites familiarization with key aspects of the common-law and civil-law traditions which have defined a significant range of legal cultures worldwide over the past centuries. Operating from an interdisciplinary standpoint, the book also offers an introduction to deconstruction, hermeneutics, linguistics and to translation studies with reference to legal interactions on the international scene. Throughout, the book uses concrete examples issuing from a number of different national laws, including Canadian, English, French, German and US law. At all times, the book prompts in-depth epistemological reflection upon the possibilities and limits of cross-border legal interaction. In this way, it clearly distinguishes itself from the available literature in the field

Introduction

This introduction explains the rationale supporting the book, by emphasizing its material and intellectual origins and by revealing its methodological and theoretical commitments. In doing so, it offers an understanding of legal and constitutional identity as a core element of legal experience. Furthermore, it provides a critical reflection on the way in which the history of Central and Eastern Europe has shaped a particular legal style and culture. By insisting on the situated character of the law in history and culture, the introduction defends a critical understanding of comparison a relation between self and other