The judge as a promoter of peace

The principal aim of this text is to draw attention to the singular role of a “promoter of peace”, which may be fulfilled nowadays both by a lawyer who provides legal assistance to a client and a judge. Discussing the matter from the standpoint of legal theory, the study will thus first examine the difference between judicial adjudication of disputes and their resolution, including methods based on the practice of peacemaking, which promotes peaceful interpersonal relations and positive personal transformation of the parties to disputes to establish between them a state known as positive peace. Subsequently, a dogmatic-legal analysis will seek to identify selected applicable regulations which offer the possibility of implementing, on the initiative or with the assistance of a judge, amicable modes of resolving legal disputes pending before a Polish civil court. In the final part of the study, the domestic normative perspective in the field of civil law will be supplemented with major model assumptions and objectives of a special type of court, a so-called Problem-Solving Court (developing especially in the USA), where the perpetrator of an offence who is subject to conventional court proceedings, is given an additional opportunity to effectively counter the causes of lawbreaking and conflicts with members of the community (e.g., ones stemming from drug or alcohol addiction abuse or mental disorders), based on the so-called problem-solving program tailored to the individual, which is coordinated by the judge and implemented by an interdisciplinary team of experts. These deliberations lead to the conclusion that the catalogue of legislative solutions in this respect is gradually expanding, creating a real opportunity to choose and apply various conciliatory methods of managing legal disputes, also on the initiative or with the active participation of the judge, who promotes the restoration of peaceful social relations.