Wpływ spójników eksplikatywnych na zrozumiałość uzasadnień orzeczeń sądowych. Językowa analiza wyroków Naczelnego Sądu Administracyjnego w świetle zaleceń redakcji orzeczeń francuskiej Rady Stanu

Abstract

This paper treats the relations between the specific linguistic instrument, i.e. explicative (explanatory) conjunctions, and the comprehensibility of the grounds of court decisions. The author commence by discussing the functions of the grounds taking as a basis the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal. What’s more, he indicates the applicable standards in this regard. As the next step, the linguistic role of explicative conjunctions in the Polish language, as well as their practical application in the grounds of court decisions shall be presented. The author specifies the considerations in this regard on the example of a set of editorial recommendations published by the French Council of State addressed to French administrative courts. The theoretical considerations are then compared with the statistical data collected by the author on the use of explicative conjunctions in a group of 100 selected judgments of the Supreme Administrative Court issued in 2015-2019. The last stage of the analysis is to identify and discuss two observed problems related to the use of these conjunctions in the collected research corpus. On the basis of the above, the author draws conclusions regarding the factors influencing the intelligibility of the grounds of court decisions, possible methods of increasing the standards in this regard, as well as the role of explicative conjunctions in the grounds, including the use of explanatory and deductive reasoning models that their application (or non-usage) entails.