How People Use the Courts

Jacek Kurczewski and Małgorzata Fuszara

How People Use the Courts

The Disputes and Courts in Poland

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publicationin the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kurczewski, Jacek, author. | Fuszara, Małgorzata, author.

Title: How people use the courts : the disputes and courts in Poland / Jacek Maria Kurczewski, Małgorzata Fuszara.

Description: Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang, 2017. | Series: Polish studies in culture, nations and politics ; volume 6

Identifiers: LCCN 2017017253 | ISBN 9783631723715

Subjects: LCSH: Courts--Poland. | Dispute resolution (Law)--Poland. | Conflict management--Poland.

Classification: LCC KKP1582 .K87 2017 | DDC 347.438/01--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017253

Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg

This publication was financially supported by the University of Warsaw.

ISSN 2192-1822

ISBN 978-3-631-72371-5 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-72476-7 (E-Book)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-72477-4 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-72478-1 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b11231

© Peter Lang GmbH

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Frankfurt am Main 2017

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About the authors

Jacek Maria Kurczewski is Professor at the University of Warsaw and holds the Chair in Sociology and Anthropology of Custom and Law, IASS.

Małgorzata Fuszara is Professor at the University of Warsaw and Director of the Institute of Applied Social Sciences. She also is Head of the Gender Equality Research Centre, University of Warsaw.

About the book

This book analyzes how people settle disputes in and outside of Polish courts. The preference for courts against informal settlements increased with the consolidation of the democratic legal state. Still, the compromise settlement remains the cultural ideal. The authors evaluate these circumstances in their extensive study of private disputes in the courts and of different types of individual settlements. They observed that the role of power behind these choices proved to be significant as people in better social positions are more inclined to use the courts and in worse social positions more inclined to deal informally with opponents in power. The ethnic factor surveyed in other former Communist countries is also related to the relative power of the different ethnic groups. The book investigates how institutional, social and cultural factors interact in shaping the dispute settlement patterns.

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Contents

Preface

Part I. Introduction

Jacek Kurczewski

Chapter I. Theoretical approach

Małgorzata Fuszara, Jacek Kurczewski

Chapter II. Courts and conflicts in public opinion research

Part II. In the Court

Małgorzata Fuszara

Chapter III. Hate crimes

Chapter IV. Honour and reputation in civil courts

Chapter V. Private prosecution

Part III. And in the Living Law

Jacek Kurczewski and Małgorzata Fuszara

Chapter VI. Popular patterns of dispute settlement

Jacek Kurczewski

Chapter VII. Four local studies of transformation

Chapter VIII. Ethnic dimension

Part IV. Conclusions

Jacek Kurczewski, Małgorzata Fuszara

References

Paweł Orzechowski

Appendix A.Brief Note on Sampling

Appendix B. Questionnaire used in the Polish representative national survey 2014 (CBOS) ←5 | 6→ ←6 | 7→

Preface

This book is not about the law, it is about the law as it is practiced in society. So its focus is not on what lawyers do and courts do but on what ordinary people do when in the court and when considering what to do about a problem, a conflict that emerges in relations with other people and other institutions. To use courts or not, to negotiate on one’s own or with mediation of other people or to go the deputy, to the city council or to the court in order to get a satisfactory authoritative settlement. The book starts with introductory theoretical hypotheses that oriented our research done in the mid-2010s in Poland and in some localities abroad in the former communist countries. In fact, this research has been a sequel to the research begun in the 1970s, followed by one done after the democratic legal state had been established in Poland in the early 2000s. The first part of the book deals with how people use courts to defend their personality rights. The second part, based on a series of surveys, raises the question of how various dispute management and, hopefully, dispute settlement patterns are perceived by people, in other words, what is the popular dispute settlement culture as part of the living law of society.