Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-24T21:38:22.087Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discourses on Judicial Formalism in Central and Eastern Europe: Symptom of an Inferiority Complex?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2020

Péter Cserne
Péter Cserne*
Affiliation:
Northumbria University, City Campus East, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK. Email: peter.cserne@northumbria.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Post-communist Central and Eastern European legal cultures in general, and judicial style in particular, are often characterized as formalistic. This article reconstructs two ideological narratives about the formalist heritage of CEE judiciary, variants of which have dominated academic and policy debates about rule of law, judicial reforms and European integration in the last three decades. As the debate becomes linked to deeply rooted and long-term, sometimes traumatic issues of national and political identity, patterns of ideological thinking resurface easily. While it is symptomatic of CEE political cultures that the debate on judicial method has become a battleground for fierce controversies about collective (political) identity, arguably this exemplifies a broader phenomenon. Other weak or peripheral national cultures also face and struggle with issues of collective identity and inferiority complexes which may resurface in professional discourses and seemingly unpolitical domains.

Type
Articles
Information
European Review , Volume 28 , Issue 6 , December 2020 , pp. 880 - 891
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ajani, G (1995) By chance and prestige: legal transplants in Russia and Eastern Europe. American Journal of Comparative Law 43, 93–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alberstein, M (2012) Measuring legal formalism: Reading hard cases with soft frames. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 57, 161–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bibó, I (2015) The Art of Peacemaking: Selected Political Essays, ed. Dénes, IZ. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigwood, R (ed.) (2001) Legal Method in New Zealand: Essays and Commentaries. London: Butterworth.Google Scholar
Bobek, M (2006) A new legal order or a non-existent one? Some (early) experiences in the application of EU law in Central Europe. Croatian Yearbook of European Law and Policy 2, 265–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobek, M (2008) On the application of European law in (not only) the Courts of the new member states: ‘Don’t do as I say’? Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 10, 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cserne, P (2015) Formalism in judicial reasoning: is Central and Eastern Europe a special case? In Bobek, M (ed.), Central European Judges under the European Influence: The Transformative Power of the EU Revisited. Oxford: Hart, pp. 23–42.Google Scholar
Cserne, P (2019) Why care about ‘style’ in legal scholarship? International Journal of Law in Context 15, 241–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dénes, IZ (2012) Adopting the European model versus national egoism: the task of surpassing political hysteria. European Review 20, 514–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogelklou, A (2002) East European legal thinking. Riga Graduate School of Law Working Papers 4. Available at https://www.rgsl.edu.lv/uploads/working-papers-list/26/rwp4fogelklou.pdf.Google Scholar
Joerges, C and Ghaleigh, NS (eds) (2003) Darker Legacies of Law in Europe: The Shadow of National Socialism and Fascism over Europe and its Legal Traditions. Oxford: Hart. Google Scholar
Komárek, J (2015) The struggle for legal reform after communism. American Journal of Comparative Law 63, 285–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kühn, Z (2011) The Judiciary in Central and Eastern Europe: Mechanical Jurisprudence in Transformation? Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kühn, Z (2012) Formalism and anti-formalism in judicial reasoning. In Melkevik, B (ed.), Standing Tall: Hommages a Csaba Varga. Budapest: Pázmány Press, pp. 209–226.Google Scholar
Mańko, R (2005) The culture of private law in Central Europe after enlargement: a Polish perspective. European Law Journal 11, 527–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mańko, R (2013a) Weeds in the gardens of justice? The survival of hyperpositivism in Polish legal culture as a symptom/sinthome. Pólemos 7, 207–233. https://doi.org/10.1515/pol-2013-0011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mańko, R (2013b) Survival of the socialist legal tradition? A Polish perspective. Comparative Law Review 4(2), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2332219.Google Scholar
Matczak, M, Bencze, M and Kühn, Z (2010) Constitutions, EU law and judicial strategies in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Journal of Public Policy 30, 81–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mertens, T (2003) Nazism, legal positivism and Radbruch’s thesis on statutory injustice. Law and Critique 14, 277–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monateri, PG (2006) The weak law: contaminations and legal cultures. Rechtsgeschichte 8, 39–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pildes, RH (1999) Forms of formalism. University of Chicago Law Review 66, 607–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pokol, B (2014) Globális uralmi rend és állami szuverenitás [Global order of dominance and state sovereignty]. MTA Law working papers 2014/13, available: https://jog.tk.mta.hu/uploads/files/mtalwp/2014_13_Pokol.pdf.Google Scholar
Postema, GJ (2011) Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World. [A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence vol. 11.] Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Schauer, F (1988) Formalism. Yale Law Journal 97, 509–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szabó, J (1942) Hol az igazság? A biró lélektani problémái [Where is justice? Psychological problems of the judge]. Társadalomtudomány 22, 1–55.Google Scholar
Thomas, EW (2005) The Judicial Process: Realism, Pragmatism, Practical Reasoning and Principles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trencsényi, B (2020) Identity politics and anti-liberalism in post-transition East Central Europe. European Review, this issue.Google Scholar
Troop, P (2018) Why legal formalism is not a stupid thing. Ratio Juris 31, 428–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinrib, EJ (1988) Legal formalism: on the immanent rationality of law. Yale Law Journal 97, 949–1016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yagou, A (2007) Metamorphoses of formalism: national identity as a recurrent theme of design in Greece. Journal of Design History 20, 145–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar