Carving Out Central Europe as a Space of Legal Culture: A Way Out of Peripherality?

Abstract

It is quite typical for comparative legal research in our region to focus on one selected Central European legal system (usually the researcher's own jurisdiction) compared with a number of Western ones (e.g. "Legal institution X in Polish, German and French Law", or "Legal institution Y in Czech, German and Austrian law", and so forth). One may legitimately askwhy not "Legal institution Z in Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian law", not to mention comparisons with Russian, Uzbek or Armenian law? 1 The same sadly also applies to legal theory, where many Central European scholars limit themselves to importing intellectual transfers from the West and implanting them in our intellectual universe. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, but the result is that we all know Dworkin and Hart ad nauseam,

Delimiting Central Europe as a Juridical Space: A Preliminary Exercise in Critical Legal Geography

“…Furthermore, the paper develops the ideas present in the earlier publications by considering more closely the relation between the concepts of Central Europe (section 2) and Central and Eastern Europe (section 3), and refers back to this possible alternative when summarising the results of the application of the criteria of distinguishing. Finally, in contrast to an earlier seminal paper (Mańko, Škop, Štěpáníková 2018), the present one does not unequivocally argue in favour of a Central European Legal Family but instead raises two alternative concepts: that of a 'legal union' and 'legal space' (section 5).…”

“…The present paper develops ideas raised in earlier publications (Mańko, Cercel, Sulikowski 2016;Mańko, Škop, Štěpáníková 2018) aiming at the elaboration of more precise criteria for identifying Central Europe as a specific legal space, capable of articulating its interests and making an actual move towards its emancipation. Most importantly, the paper proposes a catalogue of six criteria (in section 4.2) which can be used as criteria of delimitation of Central Europe from adjacent legal spaces.…”

“…The first question is more difficult and will therefore be addressed beforehand. Among critical legal theorists from Central Europe the prevailing conception of Central Europe is that of former socialist states (including former USSR republics) which have joined the European Union (Mańko, Cercel, Sulikowski 2016;Mańko, Škop, Štěpáníková 2018). Admittedly, this is a somewhat arbitrary category, but on the other hand it is highly functional with regard to contemporary legal culture.…”

“…The legal space of Central Europe is predominantly a space of a common legal culture and a common legal mentality, and not so much a space of actual juridical interactions as opposed to the legal space of the EU or the global legal space (for want of regional forms of integration in Central Europe). Therefore, it would be more justified to speak of Central Europe as a 'space of legal culture' (Mańko, Škop, Štěpáníková 2018), rather than a juridical space (spazio giuridico) in the strict sense. As such, Central Europe is, objectively speaking, a legal-cultural space in itself (not conscious of its idenity), and the task of critically oriented jurisprudence in the region is to transform it into a legal space for itself, i.e.…”

Change of style, change of mind: lawyers’ writing manners

“… 1 Recent literature examining legal education and epistemology in Central and Eastern European countries allows me to think that the style with which I associate civil-law countries such as France is not that different from the style of research employed by scholars from former communist legal systems in the Central and Eastern European region (Mańko et al , 2016). In fact, one can legitimately assume that the communist heritage only exacerbated the positivist epistemology characterising civil-law countries in general.…”