Lidia Rodak

This monographic issue aims at analysing, from different perspectives, the 4 th wave of feminism, in the frame of the rise of the new populism. Several issues characteristic of the second wave of feminism re-emerged during the contemporary worldwide mobilization of women: gender-based violence, abortion, sisterhood and self-determination. These topics, while characteristic of previous waves of feminism, are framed by the 4 th wave in the backlash against women's freedom and rights achieved in the last decades. The papers describe genealogies and changes in feminist repertoires, action and subjectivation: the emerging of "Hashtag Feminism" and the "call-out" culture focus on vulnerability as a socially shared condition, challenging the relationship with law and building new forms of recognition and solidarity between women. As a result, sisterhood came back to the discussion as an anti-essentialist bond based on trust and an expression of free will, with a potential of converting new mutual practices into common action. Key words 4 th wave of feminism; hashtag feminism; gender-based violence; abortion; sisterhood; populism * Research fellow at the IRPPS-CNR ViVa project-Monitoring, Assessment and Analysis of the Measures to Prevent and Fight Violence against Women and coordinator of the module on Feminist Criminologies and intersectionalities of the Master in Critical Criminology at the University of Padua. Her main fields of research, teaching and study are the feminist studies in the field of gender-based violence, trafficking and prostitution, sexual and reproductive citizenship, discrimination of LGBTQI subjectivities included the criminal field, and of the production of discourses and practices of feminist and trans-feminist movements.

The book Judicial Objectivity: Merits, Limits and Beyond" poses the fundamental question of what objectivity means in the practical legal discourse and what is its role. By applying the crIticial discourse analysis to the usages of the term “objectivity” in the judicial discourse, with a focus on the experience of Poland, the research identifies a rich taxonomy of the uses that judeges make of the concept of objectivity. The main results are that objectivity has a special meaning in the legal discourse based on legal authority, and that a case can be made for a stronger interconnection between objectivity and intersubjectivity. These results challenge the theoretical foundations of the debate on objectivity in the legal discourse, and open up new perspectives for the justification of this concept in modern societies.

This article examines the different usages of objectivity in practical legal discourse based on a detailed analysis of case law. It argues that objectivity, as necessary part of legal discourse, provides coherence to the legal narration. Objectivity treated as an argument in legal discourse, responds perfectly to the needs of legal narration. The shape of legal objectivity is formulated by the internal dynamics of practical legal discourse, which in turn is determined by its character, demands and aims, and the special requirements of legal narrations. As a consequence, it can be said that objectivity goes beyond its recognized role in legal discourse as simply rhetoric tool;  it also delivers coherence in accordance to demands of legal convention. Objectivity applied from the “top down”, means objectivity of law, influences its use in practical legal discourse – objectivity in law.  However legal practice also reshapes and produces its own aspects of usage. The top down influence is represented by the role objectivity plays in legal convention, while the bottom-up objectivity provides coherence to legal narration.

This monographic issue aims at analysing, from different perspectives, the 4th
wave of feminism, in the frame of the rise of the new populism. Several issues
characteristic of the second wave of feminism re-emerged during the contemporary
worldwide mobilization of women: gender-based violence, abortion, sisterhood and
self-determination. These topics, while characteristic of previous waves of feminism, are
framed by the 4th wave in the backlash against women’s freedom and rights achieved in
the last decades. The papers describe genealogies and changes in feminist repertoires,
action and subjectivation: the emerging of “Hashtag Feminism” and the “call-out”
culture focus on vulnerability as a socially shared condition, challenging the relationship
with law and building new forms of recognition and solidarity between women. As a
result, sisterhood came back to the discussion as an anti-essentialist bond based on trust
and an expression of free will, with a potential of converting new mutual practices into
common action.

This article aims at contributing to the discussion on sisterhood in the theoretical framework of the feminist debate. In particular, it advances the discussion on sisterhood with respect to the three waves of feminism, by providing a description of the new approach to sisterhood framed by the categories of the fourth wave of feminism. Drawing on an empirical qualitative study on the circles of women (CW) in Poland, this research explores the changing quality of sisterhood by investigating women's mutual relationships, and the development of women's subjectivity. Specifically, the evolution of mutual relationship among women is demonstrated by the increased trust and development of solidarity while the strengthening of subjectivity by the increase of self-acceptance. Key words 4 th wave of feminism; sisterhood; circle of women Resumen Este artículo pretende contribuir al debate sobre la sororidad en el marco teórico del debate feminista. En concreto, impulsa el diálogo sobre sororidad respecto a las tres olas del feminismo, al aportar una descripción del nuevo abordaje de la sororidad en el marco de las categorías de la cuarta ola del feminismo. Partiendo de un estudio empírico cualitativo de los círculos de mujeres de Polonia, esta investigación explora la cualidad cambiante de la sororidad, al indagar en las relaciones entre las mujeres y el desarrollo de la subjetividad de la mujer. Concretamente, la evolución de las relaciones mutuas entre las mujeres queda demostrada por la creciente confianza y el avance de la

This essay offers a personal reading of prof. Martin Krygier's scholarship. Linking the history of Krygier's family with his view on sociological jurisprudence, especially on the living law concept, I draw the connections between the personal narration of rules of life and rules of law. His scholarship can be interpreted as a development of the living law concept integrating personal narrations of living humans in living law institutions. Keywords Living law · Sociological jurisprudence · Martin Krygier · Rules of law "Law is an institution that swims in the ocean of social complexity" M.K.

New formal legal regulations are introduced to promote gender equality and to combat discrimination in legal system. However informal social rules, which are commonly based on patriarchal hierarchical norms, still persist within all institutions. By comparing the aims of new formal rules to their final effects, it can be seen that the results achieved through their application are directly dependent on their informal contexts. 
The aim of the article is to reveal the informally embedded formality that exists within the Polish legal system. By this I refer to the roles played by informally and culturally embedded formal rules when new rules are introduced within an existing context. The specific context for my analysis is the introduction and implementation of new formal rules based on EU equity law. Specifically, the analysis identifies and discusses the factors arising from the Polish informal institutional context that influence the way the anti-discrimination law is applied.

Legal education in Central and Eastern Europe is often criticised for its inefficiency, outdated models of teaching, discrepancy between market needs and educational offer, strong power relations within institutions or distorted professional ethos of academics. Many of the institutional problems seem to stem from the peculiar historical past of the region, including the socialist heritage of higher education. Law is a particularly sensitive discipline in this respect as its education was – and arguably, has still remained – deeply overpoliticized. Although direct political influence ceased after the political transition in 1989, the professional ethos and the power relations of legal academia have hardly changed in the last twenty years. The papers gathered in the OSLS monographic issue Legal Education in Central and Eastern Europe. Challenges and Prospects discuss these problems of legal education and propose alternative solutions, which could bring about a change in the field.

The paper calls for the integration of theory and practice in legal education through integrating emotions into learning process. The ideas it aims to put forward have their roots in the work of the American educational psychologist, David A. Kolb. Using the Experiential Learning Theory Model, he elaborated on, the paper demonstrates how it can be adapted to suit legal education and what the benefits are for legal education.

In part one, I will show the limitations of the essentialist and the anti-essentialist positions using the example of the debate between different schools of Feminist Jurisprudence. As a conclusion from the limitations of this debate, I will introduce the position of “essentialism of a kind” as a proposition for objectivity in law. “Essentialism of a kind” is necessary for legal discourse because it can provide
recognition to subjectivity. Legal discourse needs a kind of “strategic essentialism” in order to protect the rights of citizens in general (as essentialism does), but at the same time it needs to be open to recognition of “the others”, which is not included
in the essentialists’ definitions. (II) In part two, I consider the similar roles played by objectivity and essentialism, especially in their “of a kind” forms. This middle way contains the essentialist core but is at the same time anti-essentialist in the sense of being open to recognition
of “the other”. I will conclude that law necessarily needs objectivity of a kind, both to provide the categories that form the solid structure of law and to provide mechanisms by which these categories can be open to individual particularities and deal with matters that fall outside existing categories. Starting with the normative formulation of “objectivity of a kind”, I will show how objectivity functions in practical discourse by approaching it on the descriptive level. Part two introduces the internal conditions for “objectivity of a kind”, which are formulated from the characteristics of objectivity in practical discourse. Objectivity
that functions in practical discourse seems to be based on coherence, which in turn provides narrative contextual sense. The institutional character of law and the specificity of legal argumentation, together with the function of law, are sets of conditions for internally shaping the soft conception of legal objectivity. The conclusion that follows is that legal objectivity is a dynamic not a static concept; and one that blurs the division between essentialism and anti-essentialism. Objectivity
in law has a dynamic potential that is determined by the indeterminate
character of practical legal discourse. In this way it is able to reshape the firmly established categories that belong to the core.

The central issue I intend to address in this chapter is that of structural violence perpetrated in the realm of law. This phenomenon has no obvious and unambiguous character, not only because it is by definition hidden but also because the nature of law is necessarily linked with violence. In this chapter, I shall investigate the central forms of structural violence perpetrated within law against women in the Polish socio-legal context.

The practical discourse willingly uses the formula of “objective interpretation”, with no regard to its controversial nature that has been discussed in the literature. The main aim of the article is to investigate what “objective interpretation” could mean and how it could be understood in the practical discourse, focusing on the understanding offered by judicature. The thesis of the article is that objective interpretation, as identified with textualists’ position, is not possible to uphold, and should be rather linked with conforming interpretation. And what this actually implies is that it is not the virtue of certainty and predictability – which are usually associated with objectivity- but coherence that makes the foundation of applicability of objectivity in law. What could be observed from the analyses, is that both the phenomenon of conforming interpretation and objective interpretation play the role of arguments in the interpretive discourse, arguments that provide justification that interpretation is not arbitrary or subjective. With regards to the important part of the ideology of legal application which is the conviction that decisions should be taken on the basis of law in order to exclude arbitrariness, objective interpretation could be read as a question “what kind of authority “supports” certain interpretation”? that is almost never free of judicial creativity and judicial activism. One can say that objective and conforming interpretation are just another arguments used in legal discourse.

The potential of Feminist Jurisprudence (FJ) is mainly built on its criticism of Traditional Jurisprudence (TJ). Through the deconstruction of the latter’s main categories such as objectivity, justice, equality, and rationality, FJ aims to demonstrate that TJ tends to mask inequality, exclusion and lack of recognition rather than being able to bring about change or provide the values under research. What is more, FJ indicates a wide range of topics that are not explored by TJ and thus have no chance to be dealt with using traditional tools. As a result, FJ provides a separate language, a different epistemology and methodological tools that can  broaden access to justice including all subjects by giving them recognition. What follows from these two approaches to jurisprudence and two distinct sets of epistemological assumptions  is  a different understanding of the subject and a different vision of social relations. As FJ convincingly shows, traditional law, with its inclination for objectivity defends legal norms as part of the legal and social order rather than an individual autonomy and integrity of subjects.
In this paper I would like to suggest a middle-way solution going beyond the dualistic categories of objectivity and subjectivity. The proposal calls for a deep structural change of the legal discourse as the only one that  really matters from the feminist point of view.

Journal Name: Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej
Publication Date: 2014

The book poses the fundamental question of what objectivity means in practical legal discourse and what is its role. By applying critical discourse analysis to the applications of the term "objectivity" in judicial discoursebased on cases from Poland-the book identifies a rich taxonomy of objectivity's uses that judges make of the concept of objectivity. The main results are that objectivity has a special meaning in the legal discourse based on legal authority, and that a case can be made for a stronger interconnection between objectivity and intersubjectivity. These results challenge the theoretical foundations of the debate on objectivity in the legal discourse and open new perspectives for the justification of this concept in modern societies.