Orzecznictwo Sądów Polskich [Polish Courts’ Case Law] is the oldest continuously issued Polish scholarly journal where research focuses on the decisions of Polish courts, in both the first and second instances, as well as courts examining extraordinary appeals or constitutional complaints.
The periodical presents individual court judgments and remarks in the form of commentaries on these judgments.
Thanks to its synthetic and problem-oriented character, a commentary on a judgment – being the basic and one of the oldest forms of academic reflection in jurisprudence – enables the commentator to refer to recent issues examined by Polish courts and to expand the readers’ knowledge by presenting the current background, while putting the judgments in the context of existing literature and case law.
The author receives 40 points for a publication in Orzecznictwo Sądów Polskich
(according to the Annex to the Communication of the Minister of Science of 5 January 2024, regarding the list of academic journals and reviewed materials from international conferences, issued on the basis of Article 267(3) of the Act on Higher Education and Science of 20 July 2018, Polish Journal of Laws [Dziennik Ustaw], consolidated text: 2023, item 742, as amended).
The journal is included in the international European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH+) database.
The journal’s mission is to disseminate knowledge about selected case law of Polish courts concerning topical issues and to present systematic and comprehensive legal academic reflection on these issues.
When discussing the judgments, the authors stress the importance, the topical character, and the socioeconomic consequences of individual judicial decisions; they also attempt to spot trends in the development of Polish case law.
The requirements set for the commentaries published in Orzecznictwo Sądów Polskich are just as high as those for academic articles. The review process employed by the Editorial Board ensures meeting these requirements. Commentaries accepted for print are original academic papers, containing multi-aspect analyses of the legal questions that the commented judgments concern.
The systematic character means that case law has been analysed in a continuous manner, without interruptions, since 1957. Moreover, the current Orzecznictwo Sądów Polskich continues the legacy of a pre-WWII periodical also titled Orzecznictwo Sądów Polskich. The journal is published monthly, always with the same sections and a similar number of judgments and commentaries.
The comprehensive character of the analyses is manifested in the fact that scholarly reflection covers judgments of general and administrative courts, as well as the Supreme Court of Poland. Each issue contains commentaries from the four main groups of legal questions decided by Polish courts: private law, criminal law, labour and social security law, and public law.
Orzecznictwo Sądów Polskich remains of current relevance, because it accepts papers discussing judgments issued recently, where topical problems important for Polish case law are decided.