From "legal revolution" to counterrevolution : crisis of liberal-democra­tic constitutionalism in Poland

This paper debates the crisis of the rule of law and liberal constitutionalism with regard to processes and events in Poland after the parliamentary elections in 2015. Iwill shortly debate the previous events in Hungary - amodel for actions undertaken in Poland. In the first part this paper debates on the concept of “legal revolutions” which took place in the East Central Europe in 1989. They succeed in the institutionalization of the rule of law and liberal-democratic constitutionalism. The second part of the paper presents the swift, ruthless and brutal destruction of the rule of law. In the third part the “flood” of legal regulations, especially in the domains of economic transactions is shortly presented, and the part four debates cultural contexts of the current counterrevolutions. Here axiological foundations of liberal-democratic constitutionalism and the rule of law are discussed, and the issues of legal hypocrisy and legal nihilism in the context of Eastern European Syndrome are presented.