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The paper aims at reconstruction and critical discussion with the main tenets of political theory of adjudication, as presented by Rafał Mańko in his book, W stronę krytycznej filozofii orzekania. Polityczność, etyka, legitymizacja [Towards a Critical Philo sophy of Adjudication. The Political, Ethics, Legitimacy]. In the paper, I demonstrate: that the interpretation of the concept crucial for the entire theory-which is the concept of political-has been chosen by Mańko in an ideological and a priori man ner; that the choice above effectively prevents the realisation of the main objective of the book, which is to legitimise adjudication; that the adoption of the ethics of adjudication advocated in the book is-in the light of the basic assumptions of that very publication-both improbable and hardly acceptable. Finally, I claim that Mańko's theory, due to its totality, can distinguish neither between legitimate law and violence, nor between justified and unjustified adjudication. As a result, it loses its critical force. All these problems are not peculiar to Mańko's theory, but they are general weaknesses of various versions of critical jurisprudence.

The objective of the paper is to present various forms of constitutionalism, with a special focus on constitutionalism understood as a form of reflection of political community. The paper adopts the perspective of reflexivity theory in order to reconstruct the basic alternatives in that regard, and also to reveal their potential advant ges and weaknesses. As it is demonstrated, it is precisely philosophical and sociological conceptions of reflexivity that are particularly suitable for understanding the specificities of constitutionalism – indeed, the latter, as a discourse about the foundations of the political and legal existence of a given community, inevitably assumes the form of reflection. The special focus within the paper is devoted to two key distinctions within the sphere of reflexivity theory, which impact the manner in which constitutional reflection is performed. The first of the distinctions concerns the relationship of reflection to tradition, while the second is done according to the criterion of the logical structure of reflexive cognizance. It is argued here that the dominant version of modern constitutionalism prescribes that constitutional reflexion be perceived as a closed process with the objective of emancipation from tradition. An alternative to this mainstream approach can be proposed in the form of capturing constitutionalism as reflexion with its foundation in tradition, at the same time dialogically mediated in other forms of social and political discourse.

The essay treats on a legal-theoretical project of ‘iuriscentrism’, proposed by Polish legal philosopher Artur Kozak. It begins with an exploration of theoretical and axiological foundations of this theory, which are, first and foremost, sociological institutionalism (as for a social ontology), philosophical transcendentalism (as for a theory of knowledge and action), and affirmative approach towards axiological foundations of the legal order. Subsequently, the article focuses on practical consequences of the above choices, which are a limitation of the judicial discretional power, and a unique way of legitimating the legal practice. According to iuriscentrism, the law is said to play a focal role in the contemporary, ethically pluralist and functionally differentiated societies; for those reasons a special approach to the legal order, the one termed as ‘a faith in law’ or ‘a patience to the law’, is necessarily required.

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