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Considerations comprised in the article concern the problem of mandatory vaccination in Poland. Particular attention is paid to the issue of conscientious exemption from the vaccine obligation. The article presents the problem of social support for vaccination in Poland, the arguments issued by vaccination opponents, the current legal status of vaccination in Poland, and finally – the legal analysis regarding the introduction of a conscientious exemption from mandatory vaccination in Poland. The article focuses on judicial opportunities of introducing conscientious exemption in the field of mandatory vaccination; it presents possibilities and obstacles to establishing institution under discussion. The thesis that public health reasons should prevail over conscientious or moral demands is advocated in the article.

The article attempts to apply Alexis de Tocqueville`s views in the area of selected second- and third-generation human rights, i. e. the rights that over the course of the first half of the 19th century were not - with some exceptions - anchored in positive law. It takes form of sort of intellectual exercise in which, based on Tocqueville`s work, his potential stance towards chosen human rights is reconstructed. The paper briefly presents modern standards referring to second- and third-generation human rights, and confronts these with legal provisions provided by the French constitutions during and prior to Tocqueville`s life. The following parts of the paper show general Tocqueville`s stance towards the concept of human rights and attempt to answer the question issued in the title of the article.

Surrogate motherhood, known also as surrogacy, is a kind of civil law contract according to which one party – surrogate mother is obliged to bear a pregnancy and after giving a birth transfer all rights concerning a child to commissioning party. There are two basic types of surrogacy, of which gestational surrogacy has recently become more popular. By concluding gestational surrogacy agreement commissioning party oblige itself to provide an embryo no matter of its source, while surrogate mother is bonded only to bear pregnancy. The second type of surrogacy agreement, often called traditional, encompasses also surrogates obligation to provide an egg, due to this fact, as the egg donor, surrogate mother becomes also a genetic mother. Surrogacy is connected to a variety of serious legal problems among others: deciding whether this kind of contract should be legal or banned and resolving an issue of a legal status of a new born child, by answering the question who is its legal parent. The paper comments a number of recent judgements given by European Court of Human Rights in the field of surrogacy. All the cases concerned question of international surrogacy, so the particular problems that were adjudicated regard the problem of recognising a foreign act of birth (Menneson v. France), giving permission to a child arrival to the intended parents country (D. and others v. Belgium) or factual separation of the child and the intended parents (Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy). Applicants in the aforementioned cases claimed that states actions regarding surrogacy were opposite to the article 8 of European Convention on Human Rights, especially the right to respect private and family life. European Court of Human Rights has not been settling a dispute in which intended parents refused to take care of the child, what could be a real test to Strasbourg`s view on the commented problem.

Global justice and the problem of immigrationModern legal philosophy provides us with two main types of global justice theories. Distributive or egali­tarian theories claim that justice requires striving to achieve the global equality from us not only in legal but also economic dimension. On the other hand, there are many theories focusing on providing and keeping only „minimal standard” i.e. human rights and questioning the global equality as an ideal. In the article I investigate which type of theories describes contemporary international relations in the most accurate way claiming that „minimal standard” theory does it and I also wonder which type is more legitimate. In my opinion, considerations devoted to the question of global justice give us a well-established background for further studies on immigration policy, especially in the context of recent EU frontiers incidents.

The word “abuse” seems to be made of two parts. The root “use” stands for “to take advantage of something” – implicitly – in casual, normal way. The prefix “ab”, however, changes the meaning of the root, indicating that it concerns something beyond the casual, normal usage. The comparison of any random definition of the strategic litigation with a simple semantic analysis of the term “abuse” immediately gives rise to a view that the strategic litigation can be easily described as a kind of abuse of the practice of litigating. This notion arises because the primary purpose of the strategic litigation does not refer to the interest of the party to the proceedings (like in the conventional litigation); instead, it is aimed at “bringing social change”, always deprived of any evaluation. The observation above is hardly the only reason supporting the necessity of investigating possible critiques of the strategic litigation. The contemporary literature devoted to this institution presents certain instances of its critique; nevertheless, it provides us with possible allegations or doubts addressed exclusively from the perspective of the strategic litigation’s proponents (or proponents of aims of the strategic litigation). As a result, such a criticism has ostensible character, focusing mostly on inefficiency of the strategic litigation, rather than on more down-to-earth sceptical reflection on ideas standing behind the whole concept.

Citizenship is commonly considered to be synonymous with the state membership and rights related to the state membership. However, modern political philosophy presents at least two contradictory visions of citizenship: the liberal and the communitarian. The first one sees society as an aggregate of autonomous subjects. The second one- tends to view it as a community. These visions result in different shapes of state organisation and of course different models of public education. While liberal vision of public education emphasises subject’s self-determination, tolerance, and free market skills; republicanism regards public education as a tool for inculcating public virtues, traditions and building sense of belonging. In the paper strong and weak points of both liberal and republican visions of citizenship and models stemming from them are commented. The author presents also the third model of citizenship – so called – low-level communitarianism that represents the demand to exempt some members of a community from state-established education. Obywatelstwo na ogół postrzegane jest jako synonim przynależności państwowej i praw z nią związanych. Współczesna filozofia polityki prezentuje jednak co najmniej dwie alternatywne wizje obywatelstwa, z których pierwsza odwołująca się do liberalizmu zakłada model społeczeństwa złożonego z autonomicznych jednostek, druga zaś – komunitarystyczna postrzega społeczeństwo jako wspólnotę. Wizje te przekładają się na pożądany przez ich zwolenników kształt państwa, w tym edukacji publicznej. Podczas gdy liberalna edukacja kładzie nacisk na niezależność, tolerancję, umiejętności niezbędne do poruszania się w warunkach wolnego rynku, republikanizm będzie widział w szkolnictwie narzędzie krzewienia cnót publicznych, kultywowania tradycji, budowania poczucia przynależności. Artykuł omawia słabe i mocne strony obydwu wizji obywatelskości i stojących za nimi modelu edukacji, wskazuje także na trzecią wizję, którą uosabiają wspólnoty niskiego szczebla, występujące z roszczeniem zwolnienia ich od obowiązkowej edukacji państwowej.

The article is devoted to the value pluralism in modern societies and its consequences, especially the problems of state legitimization and stability. J. Rawls is the author of one of the most influential conception regarding these matters, called political liberalism. His idea was to find some noncontroversial basis for the liberal, democratic state, which could be accepted by the adherents of rational, moral or religious, doctrines. In my article, firstly, I present ? original position ? as a key concept of Theory of justice which is later developed in Political liberalism . The main part of the article contains presentations of four, in my opinion principal, ideas of political liberalism: the fact of reasonable pluralism, overlapping consensus, division of public and private sphere, and neutrality principle. The criticism that stems from the liberal point of view completes the article. The objections raised by W. Galston and W. Kymlicka show that overlapping consensus could be very difficult to achieve due to the presence of closed, traditional communities. J. Gray accuses Rawls that he ignores many actual sources of pluralism, such as immigration, whereas R. Rorty claims that the whole theory of justice as fairness could be easily replaced by the concept of loyalty. In conclusion, using Berlin ? s metaphor of fox and hedgehog, I raise a thesis, that the problem of pluralism cannot be resolved by one, universal conception, even such complex as political liberalism. Normal 0 21 false false false PL X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Standardowy; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; line-height:150%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

The paper is devoted to the question of private discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in civil-law relationships. Recent judgement of District Court in Łodź regarding the question of refusal to print posters for foundation acting in favour of LGBT society is treated as starting point. The problem is analysed from the perspective of the case-law of European Court of Human Rights. The author explains how is it possible, that ECHR manage with civil-law disputes although human rights in classical form concerned citizen-state relations. The argumentation for thesis that prohibition of private discrimination could be limited in civil-law relationships due to religious freedom is supported by examples from case-law of US Supreme Court.