20 years ago, as a young Polish scholar doing a Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam with a Dutch supervisor, I gradually came to realise the existence of huge differences of legal culture between my native Central Europe on one hand, and Western Europe, on the other hand. We are all used to discussing the Common Law vs. Civil Law divide, or the subtle differences between the Romanic and Germanic legal families, but the fundamental difference between post-communist Central Europe and the West seeemed to go unnoticed in those days. Today, the specificity of Central Europe is recognised, perhaps owing to the emergence of populist regimes and the so-called 'democratic backlsliding'. But there is still a lot of research to be done, especially as regards judicial mentality, methods of interpretation, or legal education.
‘Survival of the Socialist Legal Tradition? A Polish Perspective’, Comparative Law Review 4.2 (2013): 1-28. open access | academia | researchgate
‘Выжила ли социалистическая правовая традиция? Взгляд из Польши’, Вестник Гражданского Права 14.2 (2014): 238-266 (translated by Yevgeniy Gorbunov). academia | researchgate
‘“Demons of the Past”? Legal Survivals of the Socialist Legal Tradition in Contemporary Polish Private Law’ in Law and Critique in Central Europe: Questioning the Past, Resisting the Present, Rafał Mańko, Cosmin Sebastian Cercel & Adam Sulikowski (Oxford: Counterpress, 2016): 66-89. academia | researchgate
‘Is the Socialist Legal Tradition “Dead and Buried”? The Continuity of Certain Elements of Socialist Legal Culture in Polish Civil Procedure’ in Private Law and the Many Cultures of Europe, ed. Thomas Wilhelmsson et al. (Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International, 2007): 83-103. academia | researchgate
‘Being Central European, or some reflections on law, double peripherality and the political in times of transformation’ in Tomáš Gábriš and Ján Sombati (eds.), Central and Eastern Europe as a Double Periphery? (Peter Lang 2020), 17-44. Academia
‘Carving out Central Europe as a Space of Legal Culture: A Way out of Peripherality?’ (with Martin Škop & Markéta Štěpáníková), Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration and Economics 6.2 (2016): 4-28. https://doi.org/10.1515/wrlae-2018-0002 | sciendo | academia | researchgate
‘Legal Taxonomy and the Political: A Central European Perspective’ in Law, Space and the Political: An East-West Perspective, ed. P. Bieś-Srokosz, R. Mańko, J. Srokosz (Częstochowa: Podobiński Publishing House, 2018): 14-32. researchgate
‘Critical Legal Theory in Central and Eastern Europe: In Search of Method,’ Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Iuridica 89 (2019): 5-14. https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-6069.89.01 [EDITORIAL]
‘Central
European Legal Culture Between Transition and Continuity,’ Wroclaw Review of Law, Adminsitration and Economics 6.2 (2016): 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1515/wrlae-2018-0001 [EDITORIAL]
‘Law and Critique in Central Europe: Laying the Cornerstone’ (with Cosmin Sebastian Cercel & Adam Sulikowski) in Law and Critique in Central Europe:Questioning the Past, Resisting the Present, ed. Rafał Mańko, Cosmin Sebastian Cercel & Adam Sulikowski (Oxford: Counterpress 2016): 1-15. academia | researchgate
‘Introduction: Law, Populism, and the Political in Semi-Peripheral Central and Eastern Europe’ (with Cosmin Cercel and Przemysław Tacik) in Law, Populism and the Political in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Rafał Mańko, Adam Sulikowski, Przemysław Tacik and Cosmin Cercel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024) | SSRN
‘“War of Courts” as a Clash of Legal Cultures: Rethinking the Conflict Between the Polish Constitutional and Supreme Court Over “Interpretive Judgements”’ in Law, Politics, and the Constitution: New Perspectives from Legal and Political Theory, ed. Michael Hein, Antonia Geisler & Siri Hummel (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014): 79-94. ssrn | academia | researchgate
‘Introduction: Law, Populism, and the Political in Semi-Peripheral Central and Eastern Europe’ (with Cosmin Cercel and Przemysław Tacik) in Law, Populism and the Political in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Rafał Mańko, Adam Sulikowski, Przemysław Tacik and Cosmin Cercel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024) | SSRN
‘Exceptio Popularis: Resisting Illiberal Legality’ in Law, Populism and the Political in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Rafał Mańko, Adam Sulikowski, Przemysław Tacik and Cosmin Cercel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024): 116-136. academia | researchgate
‘Conclusions: Post-communism, Neoliberalism, and Populism in the Semi-Periphery’ (with Adam Sulikowski) in Law, Populism and the Political in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Rafał Mańko, Adam Sulikowski, Przemysław Tacik and Cosmin Cercel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2024), 248-259 | ResearchGate
In strictly juridical terms, the definiens of peripherality is the position taken by a jurisdiction with regard to the global flow of legal models: the centre
is where legal forms are produced, the (semi-)periphery is where those forms are then transplanted. If, perhaps, Wallerstein’s distinction of periphery and semi-periphery could be given a certain content within the sphere of the juridical, this could be through the distinction of how exactly legal transplants operate in these two respective zones of global legal culture, especially with regard to the active or passive role of local legal elites, the degree of adjustment of legal transplants to local needs and conditions, and finally with regard to the degree of the unquilting of legal form from legal substance."
(Rafał Mańko, Przemysław Tacik & Cosmin Cercel, "Intoduction: Law, Populism and the Political in Semi-Peripheral Central Europe" [in:] Rafał Mańko et al. (eds), Law, Populism and the Political in Central Europe, Birkbeck Law Press 2024, pp. 13-14)
© dr hab. Rafał Mańko