Marxist Legal Thought in Poland

Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Leopold Seidler

Since World War II, Polish legal theory has focused principally on the sociological aspect of the law, dealing with its origin and social function. Detailed research and analytical studies have supplied information about which social groups have in the past influenced the enactment of legal norms, what their motives were, and what benefits they derived from these laws. As a result of this research the law lost its sacred character. It ceased to be thought of as something extraordinary and came to be regarded realistically as an instrument for the realization of the interests of those groups which had influenced the enactment of the law. This kind of research, however, proved to be insufficient and somewhat one-sided. Consequently, new problems are being considered, and, of these, three are receiving special attention: (1) the evaluation of positive law, (2) the relationship between legal consciousness and socialist consciousness (which might also be called Marxist consciousness), and (3) comprehensive legal research. All of these problems have practical implications for us which, I trust, justify a brief discussion of them here. Inasmuch as these problems are still being investigated and discussed, I will confine myself to mere presentation of them and mention of the efforts that have been made toward their solution.

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Natan Gultom

Holocaust studies post-World War II have found ways in intersecting to other studies within the Postmodern era. In 1980, a short-story “The Shawl” was written depicting a holocaust brutality done towards the Jews. The story revolves around a Jewish woman, Rosa, that lived through the bitterness of seeing her daughter, Magda, being slaughtered in a concentration camp. In the context of “The Shawl”, this article would like to describe the relationship between holocaust studies and the subaltern studies within postcolonialism. Furthermore, this article discusses if there are hints “The Shawl” invokes a sentiment for the Jews to take revenge towards their former oppressors. The aim of this article is to further the argument “The Shawl” has no characteristics of taking revenge which eventually leads to subaltern genocide. “The Shawl” functions better as a remembrance so generations of the future do not repeat the horrors of the past.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 649-688
Author(s):  
Douglas G. Morris

What is the relationship between Nazism and natural law—the notion of universal standards, which arise from either God, revelation, nature, rationality, or morality, and which human-made statutes cannot break? In 1946, in the wake of World War II, Gustav Radbruch, one of Germany's most respected Social Democrats and legal philosophers, published his influential article, “Statutory Injustice and Suprastatutory Law,” which grappled with a pressing issue of postwar justice. Should courts deem judges criminally responsible for having earlier convicted defendants, and often sentenced them to death, based on denunciations by family, neighbors, or rivals, denunciations that the Nazi regime had encouraged but that a fair-minded government must condemn? As a matter of jurisprudence, Radbruch set forth his famous formula, which declared that judges must adhere to positive or statutory law, except in rare circumstances in which such law violated fundamental principles of justice. In his words, “[P]ositive law, secured through legislation and power, prevails, even if it is substantively unjust and inexpedient, unless the tension between positive law and justice reaches such an intolerable level that the law as ‘false law’ must yield to justice.” As a matter of history, Radbruch excused Nazi-era judges who had missed his jurisprudential point, because they had succumbed to the legal theory of positivism that had long permeated German legal thinking. “Positivism,” Radbruch wrote, “with its belief that ‘law is law’ rendered the German judiciary defenseless against arbitrary and criminal laws.”


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 424-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Miller ◽  
Charles Weijer

Bioethics is currently witnessing unprecedented debate over the moral and legal norms governing the conduct of clinical research. At the center of this debate is the duty of care in clinical research, and its most widely accepted specification, clinical equipoise. In recent work, we have argued that equipoise and cognate concepts central to the ethics of clinical research have been left unnecessarily vulnerable to criticism. We have suggested that the vulnerability lies in the conspicuous absence of an articulated foundation in moral and legal theory of the physician-researcher's duty of care to the patient-subject. We have repeatedly suggested that the requisite foundation is in the ethics of trust and the law of fiduciaries.Curiously, despite the absence of a published thorough exposition of our position, some have preemptively criticized our suggestion that the relationship between physician-researcher and patient-subject is fiduciary. Others have offered their own accounts of the implications of fiduciary law for the relationship.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Dixon

Scholarship on states’ responses to international norms has focused on commitment, compliance, and noncompliance; paying insufficient attention to responses that fall outside these categories. Beyond simply complying with or violating a norm; states contest, resist, and respond to international norms in a range of ways. I identifyrhetorical adaptationas a central form of resistance to international norms. Rather than simply rejecting a norm or charges of norm violation, such a strategy draws on a norm’s content to resist pressures for compliance or minimize perceptions of violation. Theorizing the relationship between norms’ content and states’ resistant rhetoric, I identify four types of rhetorical adaptation: norm disregard, norm avoidance, norm interpretation, and norm signaling. To probe the plausibility of these propositions, a case study of Turkey’s post-World War II narrative of the Armenian Genocide traces a sequence of rhetorical adaptations over the past six decades. Building on the case study, I then draw out generalizable insights into the uses and effects of rhetorical adaptation. Connecting theoretical concerns in political science with the interdisciplinary fields of genocide studies and memory studies, I delineate the ways in which actors instrumentally use norms and expand understandings of the forms and effects of so-called norm takers’ agency.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-45
Author(s):  
Carmen Chelaru

Abstract In 2018, Romanians celebrate the Centenary – a hundred years since Romania had the largest territory ever inhabited primarily by Romanians, at the same time, a century since Romania as a modern country was born. What do we know about our history in the last one hundred years? What and why do we celebrate? We know too little; many of the Romanians participating in the celebration do not know what it is for. The torrent of pathetic and solemn words about the past is useless. I followed two paths side by side, which happen to be in a natural connection, but sometimes they also go through distinct stages: on one hand, the course of the main historical events from the beginning of World War I until now, and on the other hand, Romanian musical life during the same period. I will cover five historical stages (World War I, Interwar Period and World War II, Soviet Occupation, Ceauşescuʼs era and Post-Communist Period) pursuing four main aims: a) an explicit historical image (as a musician I had a relatively narrow perspective on general historical facts); b) completing superficial knowledge received in school (before 1989) with information to justify certain events; c) the relationship between history–culture–music, in support of the idea that art does not exclude knowledge and civic involvement, on the contrary; d) the Past justifies the Present and together they work upon the Future. In the epilogue I will reveal an example that I consider illustrative for this fourth aim: the project Saving Enescu’s Cottage from Mihăileni. I have made this study mainly for my own benefit, in order to understand the historical facts, but especially to find an answer to the question: knowing history – what’s the use?


2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110416
Author(s):  
Vitali Shkliarov ◽  
Vera Mironova ◽  
Sam Whitt

Our research considers the relationship between historical memory and political evaluations of the past and present. We first examine how historical reflection on the Soviet Union under Stalin is influenced by memories of familial suffering during World War II and victimization under the widespread Soviet gulag prison system. Based on a 2019 representative survey of Ukraine, we show that respondents who recall family members being injured or killed fighting during World War II and those who recount families being imprisoned in Soviet gulags have increased positive and negative appraisals of the Soviet Union under Stalin respectively. However, we also find that favorable opinions of Stalin are strongly predicted by approval of Vladimir Putin, who has actively promoted rehabilitation of Stalin’s legacy to bolster personalist rule at home and justify revisionist agendas abroad, including in Ukraine. Our results underscore interactions between the present and past in shaping historical memory such that what appears as enduring legacies of the past could also be a function of present political circumstances.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  

For almost 20 years after the end of World War II, many Japanese women were challenged by a dark secondary hyper pigmentation on their faces. The causation of this condition was unknown and incurable at the time. However this symptom became curable after a number of new cosmetic allergens were discovered through patch tests and as an aftermath, various cosmetics and soaps that eliminated all these allergens were put into production to be used exclusively for these patients. An international research project conducted by seven countries was set out to find out the new allergens and discover non-allergic cosmetic materials. Due to these efforts, two disastrous cosmetic primary sensitizers were banned and this helped to decrease allergic cosmetic dermatitis. Towards the end of the 20th century, the rate of positives among cosmetic sensitizers decreased to levels of 5% - 8% and have since maintained its rates into the 21th century. Currently, metal ions such as the likes of nickel have been identified as being the most common allergens found in cosmetics and cosmetic instruments. They often produce rosacea-like facial dermatitis and therefore allergen controlled soaps and cosmetics have been proved to be useful in recovering normal skin conditions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman

John Cranko's dramatic and theatrically powerful Antigone (1959) disappeared from the ballet repertory in 1966 and this essay calls for a reappraisal and restaging of the work for 21st century audiences. Created in a post-World War II environment, and in the wake of appearances in London by the Martha Graham Company and Jerome Robbins’ Ballets USA, I point to American influences in Cranko's choreography. However, the discussion of the Greek-themed Antigone involves detailed consideration of the relationship between the ballet and the ancient dramas which inspired it, especially as the programme notes accompanying performances emphasised its Sophoclean source but failed to recognise that Cranko mainly based his ballet on an early play by Jean Racine. As Antigone derives from tragic drama, the essay investigates catharsis, one of the many principles that Aristotle delineated in the Poetics. This well-known effect is produced by Greek tragedies but the critics of the era complained about its lack in Cranko's ballet – views which I challenge. There is also an investigation of the role of Antigone, both in the play and in the ballet, and since Cranko created the role for Svetlana Beriosova, I reflect on memories of Beriosova's interpretation supported by more recent viewings of Edmée Wood's 1959 film.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Andreu Espasa

De forma un tanto paradójica, a finales de los años treinta, las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos sufrieron uno de los momentos de máxima tensión, para pasar, a continuación, a experimentar una notable mejoría, alcanzando el cénit en la alianza política y militar sellada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El episodio catalizador de la tensión y posterior reconciliación fue, sin duda, el conflicto diplomático planteado tras la nacionalización petrolera de 1938. De entre los factores que propiciaron la solución pacífica y negociada al conflicto petrolero, el presente artículo se centra en analizar dos fenómenos del momento. En primer lugar, siguiendo un orden de relevancia, se examina el papel que tuvo la Guerra Civil Española. Aunque las posturas de ambos gobiernos ante el conflicto español fueron sustancialmente distintas, las interpretaciones y las lecciones sobre sus posibles consecuencias permitieron un mayor entendimiento entre los dos países vecinos. En segundo lugar, también se analizarán las afinidades ideológicas entre el New Deal y el cardenismo en el contexto de la crisis mundial económica y política de los años treinta, con el fin de entender su papel lubricante en las relaciones bilaterales de la época. Somewhat paradoxically, at the end of the 1930s, the relationship between Mexico and the United States experienced one of its tensest moments, after which it dramatically improved, reaching its zenith in the political and military alliance cemented during World War II. The catalyst for this tension and subsequent reconciliation was, without doubt, the diplomatic conflict that arose after the oil nationalization of 1938. Of the various factors that led to a peaceful negotiated solution to the oil conflict, this article focuses on analyzing two phenomena. Firstly—in order of importance—this article examines the role that the Spanish Civil War played. Although the positions of both governments in relation to the Spanish war were significantly different, the interpretations and lessons concerning potential consequences enabled a greater understanding between the two neighboring countries. Secondly, this article also analyzes the ideological affinities between the New Deal and Cardenismo in the context of the global economic and political crisis of the thirties, seeking to understand their role in facilitating bilateral relations during that period.


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