The Boundaries of Law: A Response to “A Compromise—or a Lie? A Voice in the Controversy over the Scope of Legislation on Human Life Protection in Poland,” a Polemics of Piotr Ślęczka, SDS

Alfred M. WIERZBICKI

Department of Ethics, Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

The present considerations regarding the boundaries of law are a response to Fr. Piotr Ślęczka’s criticism of the author’s standpoint (see Piotr Ślęczka, SDS, “A Compromise—or a Lie? A Voice in the Controversy over the Scope of Legislation on Human Life Protection in Poland,” Ethos 29:4(116) (2016): 297-305). The context of the considerations is the public initiative to toughen the prenatal life protection law and the mass protests the initiative in question encountered in Poland in 2016.

The 1993 anti-abortion law allows legal abortion if one of three exceptions is met. The author holds that the hiatus between the moral norm and the legal norm results here from the lawmaker’s consideration of the boundaries of law as such. Firstly, the boundaries of law are a consequence of the democratic procedures of voting used in lawmaking. However, a legal compromise does not necessarily turn into an axiological one. Secondly, the boundaries of law are a consequence of the lawmaker’s consideration of the human condition, its contingency and tragic realities, in the face of which the lawmaker suspends the categorical nature of the legal norm without, however, questioning the imperative nature of the respective moral norm. In cases in question the law abstains from prescribing heroic acts or acts beyond the psychological capacity of the subject.

The author’s standpoint stems from the view that both faithfulness to values and the ability to compromise are the pillars of democracy. The wisdom of the lawmaker lies in the concern for preserving the link between the two in the situation of a grave axiological conflict.

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska

Keywords:

right to life, the norm of morality, legal norm, democracy, values, axiological compromise, political compromise