In the unusual song describing Matejko’s painting “Rejtan”, Jacek Kaczmarski uses – in the mouth of the Russian ambassador to the court of the Polish king – a term that I remember for the rest of my life, “Authority is not a penny here.”

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Authoritarian leaders of all walks of life have always loved to use lawyers to sell their authoritarian decisions. They disliked lawyers and generally dismissed them as evil and an obstacle. Nevertheless, these authoritarian leaders felt they knew what to do to make what they were doing looked decent. For this…

These arrests were taken from some Soviet KGB handbook in the chapter titled How To Break The People’s Enemy. They make no sense in trial, they give nothing. They are only a form of repression, making an impression, and giving the political benefit to the political beneficiaries. The three-letter service…

The judicial hierarchy is that they are at the very top, making the final verdict, no matter what stupidity in that verdict was pronounced. Therefore, the highest concern of the system, of any system, should be that at the very top there should be judges who do not foolishly. In…

There is no concept of prohibited evidence in the Polish civil trial. This means that evidence obtained as a result of a crime, not to mention any other violation of the law, may be taken into account by the court. Different rules apply in more formal legal systems. The solution…