Professor G.L. Seidler’s Concept of a Versatile Analysis of Law

Abstract

The concept of the model of versatile analysis of law that has been built in 1967 by Professor Grzegorz Leopold Seidler, seems to be one of his most important achievements on the field of legal theory. The model had been announced before other similar concepts appeared in the Polish theory of law. Its idea was to create the complex and holistic model, in that the levels of legal research result from the phases of the existence of the legal phenomenon. The levels of political decision as well as juridical, psychological and sociological levels reflect the legal process starting from the political decision of law making, then impacting the conscience of the legal norm addresses and in effect changing the social relations. A category of the “reflective junction” connects the social effects of the law with the need of the new political intervention, tying the last phase of the old cycle (a sociological one) with the first phase (of political decision) of the new cycle. The core of the model is a careful departure from the domination of formal-dogmatic level in legal research, what should overcome the one-sided dimension of the old traditional jurisprudence, not leading however to the weakening of the essence of the law. It should rather enrich the methodology and the subject of the legal theory so that its role in the integration of legal science with other social sciences could be strengthened.