Poland’s rule-of-law crisis revisited: The story of juristic scientism

Abstract This article contends that the roots of Poland’s rule-of-law crisis go deeper than the 2015 populist turn, arguing that the crisis has grown from enduring deficiencies in Poland’s legal culture. It adopts an integrative, agentic-structural perspective, emphasizing that structures matter but so do the decisions of the agents acting with them. The article highlights specifically the role of “juristic scientism,” a legal imaginary prevalent among Polish legal scholars that assumes legal professionals can uncover the “true” and “objective” meaning of law through a rigorous scientific method. Initially construed by legal scholars during communism as a defense of legal autonomy against authoritarianism, this imaginary persisted in the democratic period, hindering the development of a robust rule-of-law culture. Juristic scientism is particularly visible in Polish legal education, where Polish students memorize “objective legal truths” rather than critically engaging with the meaning of law. This deficit in critical reasoning skills deeply affected the judiciary, which, after 1989, faced sustained criticism for its excessive formalism, the poor quality of statements of reasons, and the resulting inability to convince the public of these reasons. Consequently, society grew critical of the courts, a sentiment on which the Law and Justice party capitalized during its 2015 electoral campaign by promising judicial reforms. Thus, juristic scientism created conditions for the erosion of the rule of law, making an assault on the judiciary both possible and likely. Revisiting prevailing accounts of the post-socialist legacy, the article offers a corrective, demonstrating that juristic scientism does not produce excessive political responsiveness but, rather, generates patterns of under-responsiveness to political and social demands. This reconceptualization helps explain how attacks on courts could attract substantial electoral support while simultaneously provoking strong institutional resistance from legal actors. The article concludes by discussing the implications of this analysis for ongoing debates on restoring the rule of law in Poland.