The Argument from Legal Fetishism in Constitutional Discourse

• Authors: Jacek Srokosz

Abstracts

EN

The subject of the analysis presented in the text is an argument that tends to (and used to) be raised in the critical discourse on constitutionalism – the allegation of the so-called constitutional fetishism. The argument is to show why the constitutional discourse has lost its potential to explain and create social processes. The reason is that lawyers focus too much only on the content and interpretation of the provisions of the constitution, without considering a broader social context, which makes the constitutional discourse limited solely to legal issues with a simultaneous omission or underestimation of all other aspects of constitutionalism. This attitude of lawyers to the content of the constitution (or – in broader terms – to the provisions of law) is sometimes referred to even as idolatrous, hence the reference to the notion of fetishism in the religious sense. The aim of the text is to analyse the structure of this argument and to attempt to determine the impact it can have on constitutionalism.

Keywords

EN

legal fetishism; constitutionalism; constitutional discourse; mismatch between law and reality; constitutional crisis

• Publisher: Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
• Journal: Krytyka Prawa. Niezależne studia nad prawem
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 291-305

Dates

published

2019

Contributors

author

Jacek Srokosz

Identifiers

DOI

10.7206/kp.2080-1084.287

Biblioteka Nauki

1967708