Maciej Pichlak

The essay aims at analysis of the manner Polish jurisprudence perceives a role of critical perspective within legal thought. Only such critique might be plausibly called a 'reflection', since it is conducted from an internal point of view  the viewpoint of legal professionals who criticize their own conceptual schemes. This analysis of theoretical projects is made in the light of sociological processes of increasing reflexivity of social practices and institutions, law included (Giddens).
The essay takes under examination four particular metaphors which are to be met in Polish jurisprudence: a lawyer as a philosopher, a lawyer as an artist, a lawyer as a participant of culture, and a lawyer as a believer. Each of them offers a slightly different answer to the question on the room for critical reflection in the law. The particular interest is paid to the way these four various theoretical proposals recognize, respectively: a significance of professional legal tradition, mutual relations between law and its social surroundings, as well as a role of individual agent in legal practice.

The aim of this article is to present Kaarlo Tuori’s theory of law termed Critical Legal Positivism (CLP). It outlines the fundamental claims of CLP with regard to law, conceiving law as a complex, dialectical concept combining the opposing (to some extent) elements described in legal tradition as ratio and voluntas (rational standards and political will). According to CLP, this complexity is best represented by a theoretical model of law as a multi-layered order, containing a surface layer (positive law), a legal culture and a ‘deep culture’. All three layers, according to a positivistic account, are regarded as socially created, yet they differ in their nature and in the way they come into being. A reconstruction of those layers is followed by analysis of the main functions of the deeper levels of legal order. On one hand, those deeper strata are said to discharge a limiting and critical role (they restrict the discretionary will of law-making and law-applying authorities); on the other, they constitute and legitimise positive law. By the same token, they serve as a medium between law and public opinion.