Judicial Decisions in Polish and English classifications of legal texts

Judicial decisions, belonging to a category of legal texts are produced in a special language generally called the ‘language of the law’. The language of the law is different in each legal system; therefore, the English language of the law will fail to have the same characteristics as the Polish język prawny (legislative language). Divergences already occur at the level of the classification of these languages. The first suggestion for the division of the Polish language of the law was made by Wróblewski, who in 1948 distinguished język prawny, which is applied to legislative texts and is used by legislative authorities (in Poland the major legislative authority is the Parliament (Sejm and Senat)) and język prawniczy (non-legislative language), which is employed, for example, by lawyers or public administration bodies and is applied to texts other than the source of law. This dichotomic division was further developed by Zielinski, who suggested the term języki okołoprawne (non-legislative languages) for the earlier term prawnicze, with the former term being superordinate to the latter. In his classification, Zieliński divided język prawniczy into język praktyki orzeczniczej (jurisdictional language) and język praktyki pozaorzeczniczej (non-jurisdictional language), where the former is subdivided into język postępowań sądowych i quasi-sądowych (the language of proceedings and quasi-proceedings) and język rezultatów tych postępowań lub ich uzasadnień (the language of these proceedings or their justifications). In view of their nature and function in the law, Polish judicial decisions belong to the last category, i.e. język rezultatów postępowań lub ich uzasadnień. A slightly different approach is presented by Marczyk, who argues that język praktyki orzeczniczej belongs not only to the group of języki prawnicze but also to język prawny in its broad sense, the function of which is to describe the state of affairs. Generally, the criterion for the division of the Polish legal language is the sociolect, however, there are other typologies which make use of stylistics as the principal criterion.

As far as the English language of the law is concerned, there is no clear-cut distinction (although it is tempting to use Polish standards and distinguish ‘legal language’ from the ‘language of the law’). English legal theorists devised a “bipartite system in which language has two primary functions: regulatory and informative”. This system served as a basis for Šarčevič to group legal texts with regard to their function into: 1) ‘primarily prescriptive’, which contain laws and regulations, codes, contracts, treaties and conventions; 2) ‘primarily descriptive but also prescriptive’ also called ‘hybrid texts’, these include judicial decisions, appeals, requests, pleadings, etc.; and 3) ‘purely descriptive’ such as legal opinions, law textbooks, articles, etc. If we were to juxtapose this classification with the Polish typology mentioned above, it could be noted that the legal texts included in the first group might be compared to the Polish język prawny, while the texts belonging to the second and third group to język prawniczy. Such a comparison would function only in the Polish system, since in the English legal system both the first and the second group of texts ‘contain legal instruments used in the mechanism of law’, whereas in the Polish legal theory only the first group of texts has legal force. The table below presents the comparison of English and Polish legal texts.

Types of texts	English legal theory	Polish legal theory
1) primarily prescriptive	teksty prawne (judicial decisions)	teksty prawne
2) descriptive and prescriptive		teksty prawnicze (judicial decisions)
3) purely descriptive	teksty prawnicze

General classification of legal texts in the English and Polish legal system with reference to the Polish terminology.