This book contains texts prepared by representatives of various branches of law, philosophers and dogmatists who link a general reflection on law with caselaw. This ensures that the presented approaches are versatile and insightful, and that the addressed issues vary, the most important of which is the oeuvre of the Polish jurisprudence and its contribution to building a modern state and legal theories. The context exceeds beyond a simple report on or presentation of this oeuvre and, in many cases, it only refers to it. The primary aim of this book is to determine, as follows: 1) the source (at least the potential source) of modernist solutions in the Polish law, 2) the realness of the modernist character of the said source and 3) the refection of these modernist solutions in the currently binding Polish law.

In this book the authors present and, more importantly, give their own assessment of judicial decisions interpreting the Criminal Code provisions currently in force on self-defence and the transgression of its limits. The authors have critically verified the empirical material of 88 Supreme Court, 194 Court of Appeal and 34 District Court decisions in which an adjudicating body ruled on the merits with reference to the components and functions of self-defence or the transgression of its limits. The ultimate aim of this study is to answer the question if the present wording of relevant provisions is optimal, especially as judicial decisions are dominated by certain interpretative directions of these provisions that have an overwhelming impact on positions taken by courts in matters of detail. The present study, therefore, will not only reflect on legal dogmatics, by analysing the law as it stands now and the way it works in practice, but will also attempt to suggest amendments to the law.