Education of Judgments

For several months in Rzeczpospolita I have been discussing the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the issue of discrimination in employment. At this point, I do not mean the content of the judgments themselves, the court’s thinking about its place and meaning, but I would say simple technological and practical solutions related to these judgments.

The judgments themselves as well as their external setting are standardized and very much take into account the educational dimension of the activities of the courts. In this sense, they can certainly constitute a model for national jurisprudence, including Polish. It is a series of simple solutions that greatly facilitate the reading of judgments and make them easier to understand –

1. judgments are written in a format with a side note, which makes it extremely easy to navigate through the document;
2. The Court certainly keeps an eye on the length of judgments, of course, there are cases of judgments with the justification of very long ones, but generally they do not exceed 10 pages, usually they are much shorter;
3. the judgment does not contain any justification in the strict sense – the entire text together with the justification is a judgment;
4. in the first part, the judgment summarizes the legal status to which it refers; it therefore appears that such an understandable and consistent summary is possible; The judgments issued in Poland in this respect are based on the assumption that those interested in the judgment must pick up and check the content of the provisions;
5. the facts are summarized in an extremely brief manner, without going into excessive detail, which is the manner of Polish courts;
6. finally, legal considerations follow;
7. finally, the judgment itself, which is also in the form of a declarative sentence – which is indirectly due to the fact that the Court generally refers to questions referred for a preliminary ruling by domestic courts, and not to the parties’ claims.

In addition, the Court presents a page and a half summary of the judgment and the opinion of the Advocate General. The possibility of getting acquainted with the content of the judgment is available to any interested party.