Poland’s Gordian Knot
How can such a problem exist in the land of the real Camelot?
With Miroslaw Manicki
Poland is stuck. Poland, the land of the real Camelot, is stuck.
Historians, recall that Poland has been the site of many early, historic legal breakthroughs. Many of these took place in Piotrków Trybunalski. Founded in the late Middle Ages, Piotrków was once a royal city that filled an important role in Polish history; the first parliament sitting was held here in the 15th century. There were other sessions of the Sejm there as well. Piotrków Trybunalski became the seat of a Crown Tribunal, the highest court of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Not necessarily celebrated in song and story, it was nonetheless a ‘Camelot’ in fact.
Below can be seen the Piotrków Trybunalski Royal Castle, where noblemen and knights met to coordinate their responsibilities and establish laws. This kind of activity in Piotrków dated back to the 13th century.
There was no mystery to the process, no ‘sword in the stone’ or magic spells as in the English notion of Arthur and the ‘knights of the round table’. Knights and noblemen did come together in Piotrków and this tower is where they came. Below are pictures of commemorative medallions honoring the longstanding legalistic tradition tradition there.
In the development of its traditions of jurisprudence over the centuries onward Polish lawmakers called on “Roman law, canon law, Germanic law, the law merchant, and all the other sources which generally inspired the legal systems of the civil law world” of those times (Schlesinger, 1972). They also innovated.
The list of innovative ideas and institutions … is impressive indeed. For example, Polish scholars of the 15th century were far ahead of their western colleagues in enunciating some of the fundamental principles of “modern” international law, such as the postulate of legal equality of Christian and non-Christian nations, the natural right of self-defence (now enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter), the unlawfulness of belligerent acts against civilians except when justified by “inevitable necessity,” and the limited availability, as against war crime charges, of the defense of superior orders.
Another claim … is that Poland, much more than its neighbors on either side, has an old tradition of legal protection of religious minorities. In 1367, when in England, France and Germany all Jews were subject to expulsion and extermination, Casimir the Great granted them freedom of worship, political self-rule, and other privileges… Although frequently violated by later generations, the charter of minority rights issued by that outstanding 14th century ruler still commands our admiration as a bold political and legal innovation, promulgated at a time when religious tolerance was a desperately scarce commodity in the Christian world (Ibid., 852–853).
Parliamentary innovations were enacted in Poland over a century earlier than in England .
A parliamentary system was developed. The Crown became subject to definite constitutional limitations, and a statute of 1505 provided that the King could enact no new laws without the consent of Parliament (Ibid., 852).
Polish momentum in this regard was directly suppressed from 1772 to 1918, and similarly during Soviet times. “Hypertrophic development of administrative law at the expense of all other legal institutions” during that time is clearly held to have taken its toll (Ibid., 853). That may have contributed to the current dilemma.
Poland is in the throes of a judicial quandry that has gained international disapproval (Kość, 2023). It is more than a little odd that Poland should be experiencing judicial challenges at all, given Poland’s history in this regard.
How can Poland deal with the curious tangle of political and judicial interests as represented by this problem? There is a precedent as to a potentially-effective approach — one that shares of tinge of ‘sword in the stone’ wistfulness. This is a famous story of the Gordian knot that presaged Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia. As he was traveling through Turkey with his newly-organized army in the Phrygian capital of Gordium, he came across an ancient wagon, its yoke tied with “several knots all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to see how they were fastened” (Andres, 2018).
Tradition held that the wagon had belonged to Gordius, the father of King Midas, and that an oracle had declared that “any man who could unravel its elaborate knots was destined to become ruler of all of Asia.”
According to the ancient chronicler Arrian, the impetuous Alexander was instantly “seized with an ardent desire” to untie the Gordian knot. After wrestling with it for a time and finding no success, he stepped back from the mass of gnarled ropes and proclaimed, “It makes no difference how they are loosed.” He then drew his sword and sliced the knot in half with a single stroke (Ibid).
Alexander the Great’s object was conquest of physical space. Below, we can see an artistic depiction of his act — one of many. The Polish problem is more of a conceptual nature.
As represented below, the Gordian knot was not fancy nor purposive, like a naughtical knot. It was just a big mess. Like the Arthurian ‘sword in the stone’, it held some symbolic meaning, conveying to the people some sign of legitimacy when loosed. Alexander at least was of the opinion that it stood in the way of his success.
Alexander’s act apparently brought symbolic meaning to his soliders as well — and perhaps to the armies and peoples that succumbed to their feverish attacks.
Can Poland leadership similarly succeed by not overthinking its dilemma? Symbolism needn’t factor in; we may be considering a strictly practical outcome.
Surely there needs to be cognitive breakthroughs to succeed in the many areas needed to achieve the objectives of the Polish recovery fund from the European Union. Lest the people forget, the fund picked up its current name in during the agony of pandemic recovery, but its roots were set long before that unfortunate event. This money is intended to put Poland over the top, from developing to developed, from following to leading. This will call for application of those characteristics for which Poles are famous : attention to detail; inherent pragmatism; commitment to scientific solutions, both social and physical.
Poland has a long and storied tradition of effective and fair governance. The legal standoff does not bear the obvious signs of that tradition.
Bringing knowledge and authority together to achieve such objectives depends on application of the brainpower, the commitment, and the zeal of the Polish people in conjunction with their many collaborators and partners to develop and deploy supporting systems to achieve such objectives.
It is important at this time to recognize the legal Gordian knot for what it is.
References
Andres, E. 2016/2018. What Was the Gordian Knot? History Channel, A&E Television Networks, LLC. https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-gordian-knot
Davies, N. 2005. God’s playgroud: A history of Poland, The origins to 1795, Vol. i., Rev. edition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Jerzystrzelecki/Castles in Poland. Piotrków Trybunalski Castle. Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. Wikipedia. Accessed March 6, 2023.
Kość. W. 2023, March 4, Poland’s EU billions now depend on a tainted top court embroiled in a civil war: The Constitutional Tribunal is ruling on a law aimed at defusing the rule of law conflict with the EU. Politico. Available: https://tinyurl.com/2punbkd6.
Schlesinger, R. B. 1972. Polish law throughout the ages. Cornell Law Review, 57(5), 850–854.