Rafał Mańko - sociologist of law & legal philosopher

Legal survivals & the resilience of juridical form


I have been researching the phenomenon of legal survivals and the resilience of juridical form for almost 20 years now. What initially caught my attention were vestiges of Roman law in today's South Africa, where the Roman-Dutch law still remains a subsidiary source of law, and references to Roman law in public international law (on the example of boundary rivers). Then I discovered that legal survivals are an important feature of Poland's legal culture, especially as regards "forgotten" survivals of the Socialist Legal Tradition 1989. 

The concept of legal survivals & methodological issues

  •  ‘Legal Survivals and the Resilience of Juridical Form,’ Law and Critique (online first: 6 October 2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09357-2 | ssrn | academia | researchgate

  •  ‘Legal Survivals: A Conceptual Tool for Analysing Post-Transformation Continuity of Legal Culture’ in Tiesību efektivitāte postmodernā sabiedrībā, ed. Jānis Rozenfelds et al. (Rīga: LU Akadēmiskais apgāds, 2015): 17-27. open access | academia | researchgate

  •   ‘Transformacja ustrojowa a ciągłość instytucji prawnych – uwagi teoretyczne’ [Systemic Transformation and the Continuity of Selected Legal Institutions – Theoretical Remarks], Zeszyty Prawnicze 16.2 (2016): 5-35. 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

  •  ‘Relikty w kulturze prawnej – uwagi metodologiczne na tle pozostałości epoki socjalizmu realnego w polskim prawie prywatnym’ [Survivals in Legal Culture: Methodological Remarks Against the Background of Remnants of the Period of Actually Existing Socialism in Polish Private Law], Przegląd Prawa i Administracji 102 (2015): 201-224. open access | cejsh | academia | researchgate

  • 'Transformacja ustrojowa a trwałość form prawnych' (Systemic Transformation and the Resilience of Legal Forms), forthcoming in: Prawo jest dla obywateli i im ma służyć. Wokół myśli Adama Czarnoty [Law is for Citizens and Ought to Serve Them: Reflections on Adam Czarnota's Thought], edited by Piotr Eckhardt, Filip Cyuńczyk, Michał Paździora and Wojciech Zomerski (Warszawa: Scholar, 2024 - in print). SSRN

Dimensions of legal continuity and discontinuity 


  •  ‘Form and Substance of Legal Continuity,’ Zeszyty Prawnicze 17.2 (2017): 207-232. cejsh | academia

  • ‘Towards a Typology of Dimensions of the Continuity and Discontinuity of Law: The Perspective of Polish Private Law after the 1989 Transformation,’ Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration and Economics 6.2 (2016): 108-120. https://doi.org/10.1515/wrlae-2018-0007 | sciendo | academia


 Socialist legal survivals in Poland - case studies  


  •    ‘The Cooperative Member’s Proprietary Right to an Apartment: A Legal Survival ofthe Period of Actually Existing Socialism in Polish Private Law,’ Zeszyty Prawnicze 15.4 (2015): 131-160. academia | researchgate

  •     ‘Quality of Legislation Following a Transition from Really Existing Socialism to Capitalism: A Case Study of General Clauses in Polish Private Law’ in The Quality of Legal Acts and its Importance in Contemporary Legal Space, ed. Jānis Rozenfelds et al. (Riga: University of Latvia Press, 2012): 540-561. open access | ssrn | 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


  •  ‘Prawo użytkowania wieczystego jako pozostałość po epoce realnego socjalizmu – ujęcie socjologicznoprawne’ [The Right of Perpetual Usufruct as a Survival of the Period of Actually Existing Socialism – A Socio-Legal Approach], Zeszyty Prawnicze 17.1 (2017): 35-63. academia | researchgate


  •  ‘Wybrane relikty prawne epoki realnego socjalizmu w polskim prawie cywilnym – analiza zmiany funkcji społecznej instytucji prawnych wnastępstwie transformacji ustrojowej’ [Selected Legal Survivals of the Period of Actually Existing Socialism in Polish Private Law: An Analysis of the Change of Social Function of Legal Institutions as a Result of Systemic Transformation], Studia Iuridica 66 (2016): 207-235. ceeol | academia | researchgate


Continuity of the Roman Law Tradition - case studies 


  •  ‘Roman Roots at Plateau du Kirchberg: Recent Examples of Explicit References to Roman Law in the Case-Law of the Court of Justice of the EU’ in Mater Familias: Scritti romanistici per Maria Zabłocka, ed. Jakub Urbanik, Zuzanna Benincasa, Piotr Niczyporuk & Marta Nowak (Varsavia: Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw, 2016): 501-526. academia | researchgate


  •  ‘Sądowe stosowanie Corpus Iuris Civilis w Afryce Południowej w świetle wybranego orzecznictwa’ [The Judicial Application of the Corpus Iuris Civilis in South Africa in the Light of Selected Case-Law], Zeszyty Prawnicze 4.3 (2004): 149-178. academia | researchgate


  •    ‘Alluvio i mutatio alvei. Zastosowanie reguł rzymskich w prawie międzynarodowym publicznym’ [Alluvio and Mutatio Alvei. The Application of Roman Rules in Public International Law] (together with Klara Kańska), Studia Iuridica 41 (2003): 131-151. ceeol | ssrn | academia


  •  ‘Prawo rzymskie jako źródło prawa w Afryce Południowej’ [Roman Law as a Source of Law in South Africa], Zeszyty Prawnicze 3.1 (2003): 139-162. ssrn | academia | researchgate


  •    ‘Shifts in International Boundary Rivers’ (together with Klara Kańska), Polish Yearbook of International Law 26 (2003): 135-155. ssrn


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" Legal  institutions are created at a certain point in time, intended to be applied to ‘life’ as it is perceived (by the legislators or judges or jurisprudents who create them) at the specific time when they are elaborated and cast into legal form. (...)  However, some legal institutions—which I propose to call ‘legal survivals’—prove to be so exceptionally durable that they outlive the epoch in which they were created and continue their legal life long after the conditions which lead to their creation had, in the meantime, disappeared, testifying to the resilience of juridical form. Being a flagrant exception to law’s adaptation to changing circumstances (...) and its general discontinuity after revolutions (....), legal survivals—placed, as they are, at the interstices of law’s continuity and discontinuity—are a properly ‘borderline concept’, i.e. ‘one pertaining to the outermost sphere’ (...) of the juridical form. It is due to this intensity with which legal survivals embody law’s features, as well as the fact that they represent a borderline case, rather than the routine, that their study can illuminate our understanding of the juridical phenomenon more generally and the resilience of legal forms in particular. If, following Agamben (...), we concede that ‘philosophy can be defined as the world seen from an extreme situation that has become the rule’, legal survivals are a privileged gate to the philosophy of law.  "

(Rafał Mańko, Legal Survivals and the Resilience of Juridical Form. Law  & Critique (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09357-2)




© dr hab. Rafał Mańko