Law in the Snares of the Political. Addressing Rafał Mańko’s Critical Philosophy of Adjudication

Abstract

The paper aims at reconstruction and critical discussion with the main tenets of political theory of adjudication, as presented by Rafal Manko in his book, 'W strone krytycznej filozofii orzekania. Politycznośc, etyka, legitymizacja' ['Towards a Critical Philosophy of Adjudication. The Political, Ethics, Legitimacy']. In the paper, I demonstrate: that the interpretation of the concept crucial for the entire theory – which is the concept of political – has been chosen by Manko in an ideological and a priori manner; that the choice above effectively prevents the realisation of the main objective of the book, which is to legitimise adjudication; that the adoption of the ethics of adjudication advocated in the book is – in the light of the basic assumptions of that very publication – both improbable and hardly acceptable. Finally, I claim that Manko’s theory, due to its totality, can distinguish neither between legitimate law and violence nor between justified and unjustified adjudication. As a result, it loses its critical force. All these problems are not peculiar to Manko’s theory, but they are general weaknesses of various versions of critical jurisprudence.