The research project, led by Dr. Oktawian Kuc, received funding from the National Science Centre (agreement no. UMO-2021/43/D/HS5/00674) under the SONATA 17 program. The total amount of funding was PLN 558,678.
As part of the project, a research team was formed, consisting of PhD candidates Miłosz Gapsa (University of Łódź), Julia Sochacka (University of Warsaw), and Dominik Świątkowski (University of Warsaw), as well as two students.
Thanks to the funding provided, Dr. Kuc completed research stays at several international academic institutions:
a) University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law: https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/Array/former-visiting-academics-and-postgraduate-students#k
b) University of Copenhagen, WELMA – Legal Studies in Welfare and Market: https://jura.ku.dk/english/welma/
c) Peace Palace Library, The Hague: https://peacepalacelibrary.nl/
He also participated in international academic conferences (including at the University of Oxford, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and the ESIL Annual Meeting in Aix-en-Provence) as well as national conferences (including the International Law Association – Polish Branch, the Pilecki Institute, and the Conference of Chairs of International Law).
Information about the project, along with a list of publications produced under it, is also available on the NCN website: https://projekty.ncn.gov.pl/index.php?projekt_id=537565
Popular science summary of the project:
Many scholars acknowledge that nowadays international and domestic judicial institutions are partners in the common judicial enterprise. They supplement, substitute, assist and refer to each other while exercising their official functions. It is not uncommon for judges of different systems and regimes to study and navigate through the jurisprudence of courts and tribunals from other jurisdictions, including the international one. Consequently, on one hand domestic courts increasingly consult international law and international jurisprudence while exercising their judicial functions, and on the other hand the international legal regime more frequently penetrates State boundaries and addresses national courts directly.
But why domestic courts and national judges get acquainted with case-law of international tribunals and refer to it in their judicial decisions? International law does not provide a straightforward answer, as no norm explicitly governing the status of judgements of international tribunals exists. Only a few charters or statutes of those tribunals even hint the possibility of considering an international pronouncement by domestic courts, and only in a limited manner. Other are rather silent on the issue, so it can only be addressed through reference to more general principles of international law and customary norms. Interestingly, the openness of municipal courts to the jurisprudence of international tribunals, and the International Court of Justice in particular, is dictated neither by the sense of the binding force of those decisions nor simple courtesy. It is rather something in-between.
The goal of the research project is to examine what is the status and role of international jurisprudence in domestic courts in relation to judicial decisions they render. This question will be addressed from the perspective of both public international law as well of selected national constitutional regimes. In line with the assumptions of the proposed research, both a theoretical (existing legal regulations) and practical (their application in judicial practice) aspects will be analysed in detail.
The structure of the project consists of three basic components. The first one concentrates on the analysis of the international normative material (relevant treaties, customary law, jurisprudence) and existing legal doctrinal studies. The second part of the project utilizes the legal-comparative method to verify the status and role of international tribunal judgments in selected national jurisdictions. The third element of the project is national in nature. The relevant provisions of Polish constitutional law and the practice of higher Polish courts (Constitutional Tribunal, Supreme Court, Supreme Administrative Court, selected courts of appeal) will be analysed in relation to judgments of international tribunals. This research task will be supplemented with a survey conducted among Polish judges on their experiences with international jurisprudence.
The proposed research will utilize two main legal research methodologies: doctrinal and comparative. They are to be supplemented by the socio-legal research on the subject of attitude of Polish judges towards international jurisprudence analysed with the use of qualitative methods.