Choduń Agnieszka, Argument from Precedent in Legal Interpretation of Texts of Legal Acts from the Perspective of a Derivative Concept of Legal Interpretation

The problem of previous judicial decisions (sometimes referred to as a „precedent”) has been present in the orbit of interest of the legal culture of statutory law for some time now. The reasons for this are manifold, as it may be: 1) a response to judicial practice (courts cite decisions of other courts); 2) a diagnosis of certain changes in the legal culture; 3) the question of an argument from authority; 4) a shorthand for binding legal decisions that go beyond a specific case in regulatory findings. Earlier legal de-cisions have different levels of significance for the subsequent application of law. This significance can be determined by legal provisions that, for procedural reasons, require consideration of decisions made by other courts, but it may also have its roots in the deciding courts’ genuine appreciation for prior court judgments.

Although in the statutory law and, therefore, also in the Polish legal system, pre-cedent understood as a principle or a rule established in an...