Definicje legalne jako nakazy dotyczące myślenia na gruncie założenia o normatywności tekstu prawnego
Legal definitions as directives related to thinking on the basis of the assumption of normativity of legal text

Summary/Abstract: When characterizing the normativity of legal definitions, researchers sometimes use such terms as understanding or meaning, which allow one to theorize legal definitions as a type of directive related to thinking. The present work grows out of the need to critically analyse the proposals of researchers in which such terms occur. The main purpose of the article is to develop two approaches to legal definitions, generalizing proposals encountered in the papers on legal theory. Each approach provides a different answer to the question of what behaviour is prescribed by the definition. In the first, it is assumed that legal definitions are directives of directly perceivable actions. In the second – that they command the addressee to think in a certain way. These considerations lead to the conclusion that the assumption of the normativity of legal text, insofar as it concerns legal definitions, is difficult to maintain if we agree at the same time that the behaviour prescribed by the definitions should be identifiable. The paper's methodology is based on the research conducted within the Poznań-Szczecin School of Legal Theory, including works by Zygmunt Ziembiński, Maciej Zieliński, and Maciej Dybowski.

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