dr Witold Zontek (PhD) – assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Law at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow; judge’s assistant in Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Poland; author of numerous papers on criminal law, procedure and theory; co-author of a comprehensive and dogmatic translation of the Polish Criminal Code into English

Adam Wojtaszczyk – assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Law at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow; attorney at law specializing in criminal cases; author of numerous papers on criminal law, procedure and theory; co-author of a comprehensive and dogmatic translation of the Polish Criminal Code into English

Why HispterCrimLaw?

Well, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary “hipster” means “a person who is unusually aware of and interested in new and unconventional patterns”. The Oxford Dictionary adds “especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream.” But generally the phenomenon is broadly identified as promoting stuff before they actually become mainstream (see: urbandictionary.com). How is that connected to criminal law? More that you may think.  Our creed is that criminal law as a concept is singular. People tend to punish their fellows who did something not acceptable within a particular community. If you look closer how they shape individual criminal law systems you may see some interchanging common patterns. The systems are dynamic and adapt to current political/historical/civilization momentum.

How is that hipster?

When one researches criminal law doctrine and judiciary of systems of different origins and paths of development such as common and civil law it is striking that due to the singularity if criminal law the issues arising are similar or identical. The difference is that they appear in various forms and moments of time. They are developed less or more intensively with either deeper or rather basic intellectual in-depth etc. It often happens that an idea present in one system from ages is “discovered” in another system and debated with great scrutiny. Many times we may find an interesting court ruling that presents utterly different yet inspiring approach to an issue that we have either buried as not functional or accepted years ago as an obvious solution. But suddenly we are enlightened with something fresh and persuasive thus forced to reconsidered the used-to-seem obvious. Or… actually to show others they were walking the wrong (less interesting) path.

This blog is dedicated to that particular goal – seeking scientific inspiration for current ideas by exploring others.

How are we doing it?

In our opinion (hope it is also shared by others) some systems are more developed that others. But not in a derogatory meaning of that phrase. Most apt description would be that the development was directed by choosing different methodology of legal studies. We may either think ahead of prospectus criminal law issues and deliberate on them before they become the law (let’s call it a prospective approach) or we analyze the written law and the court rulings and retrospectively try to figure out the core idea (let’s call it reactive approach). Or sometimes we do both however with different proportions. Years of exploration of our home criminal law system and the Anglo-American ones provoked us to seek