Democratic legal systems have recently been subject to rapid and multi-directional processes of change. There are numerous sociological, technological, ideological, or purely political processes which result in law's amendment and transformation. This book argues that this legal change is best understood from a political philosophy perspective. This can be used as an interpretative device to understand the ongoing processes of change as well as their outcomes such as new laws, judicial interpretations, or constitutional amendments. The work has three main objectives: to provide deeper understanding of the problems of legal change within the diversity of Western political and legal thought; to examine the development of the processes of change in terms of their normative and prudential acceptability; to interpret actual processes of change with a view to the general theoretical and normative background. The book is divided into three parts: Part I sets the scene and is focused on the general issues important for understanding and evaluating legal change from the perspective of political philosophy; Part II focuses on the spectrum of politico-philosophical justifications present in the political culture of democratic states; Part III offers selected case studies to specify and apply the philosophical ideas in the previous parts. The book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of law and jurisprudence, including comparative legal studies and human rights law, political theory, and philosophy.

* Presents a novel approach to the study of legal change;

Classical Political Philosophy in Popular Discourse was written by an interdisciplinary team composed of academic experts in the fields of political philosophy and jurisprudence, as well as in sociology. It combines two scientific paradigms -classical political philosophy and contemporary, empirical sociology. The chief aim of this unique scientific project is to explore, operationalize, and reconstruct the political doctrine that is present in contemporary Polish society's popular discourse. The project is unique due to the unusual cooperation between political philosophers, philosophers of law, and empirical sociologists, because their normal research concerns radically different subjects, objects, and forms, using different methods and terminology. However, this project produced a synthesis of their respective approaches through a particular kind of synergy and compromise. The result is a pioneering, original reconstruction of the political doctrine of a contemporary European national community.