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The author first notes that lawyers have traditionally played an important role in creating public policy, not only by creating the law, but also because of their political leadership. The author describes their role as “architects of democracy”. Law schools around the world have risen to the challenge of educating future leaders who understand the world around them. The author explores examples of activities and initiatives to better prepare future leaders: e.g., learning foreign law and international law, participating in foreign exchanges, as well as pro bono work, undertaking social initiatives. One major task of lawyers in modern society is the promotion of democracy and social leadership. The author claims that law schools need to prepare students for issues in contemporary democracies through practical, “experimental learning”. One useful example is an internship in a public institution. The author concludes that the cooperation between the University of Warsaw and the University of Florida Levin College of Law also provides an excellent example of educating future leaders through “experimental learning”, student exchanges and transnational law courses, so they can see the connection between their future careers and studies.
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This paper focuses on the analysis of an array of teaching methods and trends in legal education in the time of globalization. Globalization of laws as one of the effects of globalization provokes necessity of applying different legal systems to a lawyer potentially engaged in many branches and legal institutions. It implies comprehensive comparative methods in teaching which are to prepare qualified lawyers ready to dynamic changes of legal systems and to different methods of legal reasoning in their field. In such a process of education wide knowledge and skills are needed. Thus, narrowing legal education only to certain methods and domains makes graduates potentially unprepared for evolution and convergence of legal branches and institutions in contemporary world. It is, then, obviously needed to come back at least to some traditional background of legal education not only in legal dogmatic but in a wider (non-dogmatic) context of a teaching process in the school of law. In addition, however, education of a lawyer requires substantial legal practice, which is still insufficiently present in European university curricula.
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The author presents the position of forensic and investigative sciences within the framework of legal education at Polish universities. The paper confronts the traditional scope of the highly theoretical criminalistics/forensics courses with the modern and innovative hands-on workshops designed and successfully employed at the Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw. The educational project nicknamed “CSI: Warsaw” was designed in order to mitigate the pop-culture driven and unrealistic expectations of the general public towards the potential and effectiveness of the investigative sciences (an approach known as the “CSI Effect”). The practical course of crime scene analysis, evidence collection and interpretation became and instantly popular and sought-after part of the University of Warsaw curriculum. The paper describes the outline and structure of the course, providing the description of the students’ selection process, the nature of the highly realistic, hands-on and real-time exercises and their assessment, as well as the practical effects for the course graduates when they enter the job market in the legal and law-enforcement professions.
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This essay offers a philosophical reflection about the role and objectives of legal education, with special attention given to the role that comparative law, legal theory and legal history could play in legal education.The author argues that legal education should concentrate on transmitting not only the knowledge about the currently binding law, but most of all skills necessary for legal profession. He distinguishes between vocational and academic skills, and further argues that it is a mistake to believe that practitioners need only the previous, while scholars only the latter. On the contrary, academic skills, encompassing inter alia skills of explanation, systematization and of critical assessment, can be very valuable for practicing lawyers, both from their own, as well as societal point of view.Within those skills, methods of comparative law and legal history play a pivotal role. Comparative law enables lawyers to understand that a legal system could be constructed in another way, to understand characteristics of one’s own legal system better, and with the help of legal history explain why the law is the way it is. That, in consequence, proves valuable both in the global context of harmonization and approximation of laws, as well as national context of legal reform and reflection about law’s underlying values.
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Stock market exchanges in transition economies typically fail. The failure is, in part, due to weak or non-existing securities laws in the transition economy. The Warsaw Stock Exchange is the exception. The Warsaw Stock Exchange serves as a successful model for newly created stock exchanges in transition economies. The Polish Government implemented strong securities laws to attract foreign investors. Poland’s strong securities laws and the Warsaw Stock Exchange listed companies’ requisite compliance with government mandated corporate governance protocols provide a sense of legal, political, and economic stability to foreign investors that are seeking to invest in developing markets.
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In a meteoritic rise from the dark days of World War II and Soviet hegemony, Warsaw has experienced an economic renaissance in recent years, boasting one of the largest stock exchanges in Europe and one of the fastest growing economies on the continent. However, the city and its surrounding areas suffer from a serious lack of comprehensive urban growth strategies, with only 16% of the city being master planned despite increasing housing, transportation, and infrastructure needs. This absence, combined with a general public aversion to centralized decision-making and weak local government fiscal policies – particularly with regard to the laws governing the setting and administration of real property taxation – has caused and will likely continue to exacerbate Warsaw’s urban growth problems. This Article explores and assesses these various challenges and their causes and recommends the adoption of the U.S. special taxing district model as one vehicle that could be used to facilitate a more effective structure for urban and growth planning in the Warsaw metropolitan area.
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This article presents a discussion between two U.S. and a Polish author about devices to promote public interests through private land development and regulation. The two U.S. authors document the fact that in many South American and European countries the concepts of social function of property and value capture play a central role in the government regulation of land development – particularly in urban areas. The social function theory of ownership, first popularized by the French jurist Leon Duguit in the early part of the 20th century, recognizes private ownership as subject to social obligations and the need for mutually beneficial use. Value capture is implemented by requiring landowners whose land values are increased through development permission granted by government regulatory entities to share some of that increased value with the public by funding public infrastructure and paying for developments such as affordable housing. In the U.S., neither term is in common usage although mechanisms such as impact fees and other development charges that require developer funding of infrastructure arguably reflect the influence of comparable concepts. The U.S. authors then posed the question to their Polish collaborator of whether social function theories and value capture are currently being implemented in Poland. The Polish author explains that the current approach to social function theories in Poland is greatly influenced by Poland’s experiences under communism, during which state property received special protection as compared to private property. After the fall of communism, this distinction was removed and private property received considerable protection as a pillar of the new economic system. However, he points out that this does not undermine the social aspect of ownership and that private ownership is not absolute and may be subjected to restrictions. In regard to the U.S. approach to value capture through impact fees, the Polish author explains that the Polish “adjacent fee” bears slight similarity to impact fees, it but does not require private landowners to participate in funding the infrastructure needs created by their development. He concludes by observing that while Polish law does not preclude adoption of measures similar to impact fees, at present there is neither political will nor popular support for such arrangements.
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The Praga district of Warsaw has been experiencing a rebirth. This phoenix district, lying within the eastern central part of Warsaw, is experiencing a period of rapid growth and revitalization. Five years ago Praga was thought of as crime-ridden and impoverished, but the area’s low rents and large, historic spaces have started attracting creative types – web designers, artists, musicians and others. In June 2014, Praga landed a windfall when internet giant Google announced plans to build a center for technology startup companies in the district. The location of Google Campus Warsaw will undoubtedly have beneficial effects on employment and property values in the district, but authorities must be careful to assure current Praga residents are among those who enjoy the benefits
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Real estate has always been an inseparable component of the history of human kind, reflecting historical events in a very wide spectrum on may occasions referenced in historical events from the ancient times, through the investiture dispute, till the Russian revolution.Nationalisation, is the process of transforming private assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Reprivatisation, on the other hand, is a process that leads to restitution of property that has been overtaken by the state in the way of nationalization or expropriation, to its former owners or their legal successors. The article describes the nationalization performed in Warsaw by communist authorities, and the later the reprivatisation procedure.
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“Warsaw is the capital of the Republic of Poland” – these words of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland should also reflect the place of Warsaw as the capital in constitutional terms in the system of Polish public governance, and, within it, its place in the system of spatial planning. Generally, in particular in Europe, big capital cities in the sense of agglomerations or rather metropolises, independently of their internal organization (though they are not reduced rather to a simple municipality), have a supralocal status, frequently that of a region. That means that their areas (metropolitan areas) may be subject simultaneously to, at least, two formulas, different in different legal systems, of spatial planning: local (generally, at the level of municipality) and metropolitan.Warsaw, in spite of rich traditions in this respect, is not, at present, equipped with instruments of metropolitan planning. The paper, reminiscing tradition of Warsaw metropolitan planning, presents respective legal solutions in force, and attempts taken to restore indispensable institutions of metropolitan planning.
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Urban sprawl is an important problem in Poland and in the EU, as well as in the US. This article analyzes the concept of urban sprawl, its drivers, its negative environmental, social and economic impacts in the EU context, using Poland as a case study. The research explores the possible ways of controlling urban sprawl and promoting more compact cities through a smart public intervention, protecting the relevant (and sometimes contrary) public interest involved, taking into account American developments like New Urbanism and Smart Growth and some EU experiences.
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São Paulo and Warsaw are undoubtedly different cities. Nevertheless, they both have critical issues and common uncertainties. Challenges involving means of transportation, lack of coordination in integrating neighbourhoods and scarce funds to meet their wishes in modernising their space are some of them. In recent years, they have expanded their urban policies using public indebtedness as an economic political solution. The aim of this article is the discussion of such a strategy as a selective apparatus promoting places for few in these two vibrant capitals. Landlocked areas and petty bourgeoisie zones usually drain the Varsovian and Paulistano public revenues once they are seen as the unique possibility of bringing rapidly massive investments to cities. The methodology of our analysis relies on a critical comment to lawful possibilities in using the public debt to promote centre-periphery infrastructure through extremely limited circles of decision-makers and functional city planning.
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There is no master plan for the metropolitan area of Warsaw. Although, at first glance, urban planning seems to be largely unregulated by UE law, the addition of sectorial regulation on many important subjects as environment, risks etc. strongly encourage a future oriented regulation of land use a master plan. And precisely because such matters goes beyond the Warsaw city's administrative boundaries, the metropolitan area seems to appear as the proper level to adopt a master plan.
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The paper, based on policy documents and legal acts, presents an overview of the EU policy and law related to town and cities environment. The European Union recognizes the role that urban areas play in the lives of many Europeans and committed itself to act in this field. The EU and especially the European Commission (DG Environment) has been intensively acting on improving the urban environment in a number of ways. The overview of the EU policy and law on urban environment shows that the European Union is committed to make European towns and cities healthy and attractive to live. A key feature of many EU’s policies and laws on environment are measures aimed specifically at protecting the urban environment. The EU acts in a number of important ways in this field, setting policies, adopting legal measures, setting standards and providing financial resources for protecting urban environment.
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In the last 30 years, China has experienced rapid economic development and urbanisation, which has resulted in high levels of environmental degradation and considerable pressure on the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. While China’s rate of development may be slowing down, China’s continuing commitment to considerably lowering the carbon intensity of its economy will still have a significant impact on the world’s quest to curb the proportion of climate change that is due to human induced-greenhouse gas emissions. This paper puts into context the governance challenges the nation encounters in achieving its carbon reduction goals. It identifies the characteristics of China’s municipal governance, policy design and development, and urban energy consumption as having the highest impact on the governance of climate change. It concludes there is a pressing need to further research on urban governance transitions to ascertain enabling and constraining factors to climate governance.
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At the current stage of the European integration, the problems occurring as a result of the coexistence of the European private law, including contract law, and the national legal systems, find their origins in the differences in legal concepts underlying these legal orders, defined by different goals and hierarchies of values. In European private law, the tendency to protect the weaker party of the contractual relationship is stronger than in national legal systems, or at least some of them. This results from the fact that the European legislator confers particular importance to the consumer protection, employment, public health and access to the public utility services (transport, telecommunications and Internet services, energy). In these very fields, European law limits the parties’ formal autonomy in order to guarantee their actual autonomy. The regulatory functions of the European law determine the content of legal relationships in order to compensate the “deficiency of equality” by strengthening the weaker party and limiting the professional’s rights. By these means a perspective based on the distributive axiology rather than on the commutative function typical for the civilistic relationships is being introduced into private law. This trend is reflected in the EU Court of Justice case-law. The abovementioned tendencies clearly correspond with the ongoing evolution of the national systems of private law under the influence of European law. In other words, the impact of the European law is getting stronger, and this not only by way of introducing new regulations, but also due to the alteration of the methods of legal interpretation and applying the law, by putting emphasis on the wider context of legal mechanisms. This process leads more and more often to consequences, which legal scholars use to characterize as a “publicization” or “constitutionalisation” of the private law.
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In the course of the evolution of state liability for damages caused in the exercise of public authority the phenomenon of constitutionalisation can be observed, dating from Polish Constitution of March 1921, which guaranteed the citizens a compensation for damages caused by the wrongful act of state authority. Not until the Polish act of state liability for damages caused by public officials entered into force in 1956, was this constitutional guarantee explicitly expressed in a legal act. The legislator partially took into consideration then the solutions propounded by Witold Czachórski, especially in the draft of a decree, which was published in 1946 in the pages of the academic journal “Państwo i Prawo” as a part of his contribution concentrating on the unification of regulations concerning state liability for damages. One of the most important postulates of Witold Czachórski, which is reflected also in contemporary constitutional and statutory legislation, was implementing a method of regulation based on the civil law system, in which a citizen is an equal party
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