Decodification of air and railway transport agreements through globalization and Europeanization : the Polish example

The existence of norms external to the code does not encourage a positivist approach, even if the process of embedding the norms in the existing conceptual system is acknowledged. In the case of private law, the concept of a single act regulating all matters is already outdated. A new way of shaping the legal order emerged in the middle 20th century, in the European countries of the civil law tradition. What preceded the civil code in application and led to the decodification of private law, was the introduction of specific acts, which became a common phenomenon. Europeanization of the law mixes with globalization and it is hard to avoid the polycentricity of the lawmaking bodies. The modern process of decodification, attributed to Europeanization and globalization of the law, is exemplified in the regulation of the transport agreement. Looking at the history of rail transport, one can notice decodification through specific acts, recodification and decodification through norms, both on local and international levels. The nature of transport plays a vital role in the process. Both passenger travel and shipment of goods imply the existence of supranational relations, which exceed the boundaries of national laws. The transport agreement needs to be adjusted to the technological advances in transport: the train in the 19th century and the airplane in the 20th century. Their rapid development these days is also an important factor to consider. New means of transport pose an increasing risk for the people and goods transported, as well as for other vehicles or the environment. In such cases, the lawmaker is more likely to adjust the legal regulations to the needs of the society. The lack of uniform regulations on the European level unleashes creativity and forces the lawmakers to return to the rules of private law in the interpretation of national courts and the CJEU. The increasing activity of judges revives the pre-codification reality. Ensuring the certainty of the sources of legal knowledge is impossible, even among lawyers. What can be done though, is to ensure the certainty of the application of law, embodied by the use of the intuitively applied, western legal tradition.