Agnieszka Kubal, “Judicial Relational Legal Consciousness: Authoritarian Backsliding As A Catalyst Of Change.” Journal of Law and Society, vol. 51, (2024): 45-65.
Summary: In the context of Poland’s authoritarian backsliding between 2015 and 2023, this article examines how legal professionals—particularly judges—respond to democratic erosion by reinterpreting and invoking human rights law. Some judges have taken the unprecedented step of acting as individual applicants before the European Court of Human Rights, challenging the Polish government’s actions. Through the lens of relational legal consciousness, the article highlights how these legal strategies are shaped by judges’ interactions with attorneys, judicial associations, human rights activists, and civil society. It demonstrates that attorneys play a pivotal role in sustaining legal resistance, fostering transnational legal dialogue, and shaping a collective legal consciousness under authoritarian pressure. By expanding relationality to include the embeddedness of law in political and social networks, the article offers a new framework for understanding how legal professionals navigate the blurred boundaries between legal integrity and political crisis.