LECZYKIEWICZ, Dorota

Visiting Fellow, 2009-2010

Email dorota.leczykiewicz@law.ox.ac.uk 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

I am a research fellow at Trinity College and the Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford. I have recently completed my doctorate, under the supervision of Professor Simon Whittaker, in which I examined and compared the reasoning of French and English judges on the question of recoverability of harm in their respective tort laws. The thesis observed the differences between the techniques English and French judges employ to address the question of recoverability of harm and placed them in a broader context of English and French legal traditions. It showed how the presence of a civil code, formal recognition of judicial law-making, the doctrine of precedent, historical conditions, such as competition between judges and jury, and the traditional relationship between court and the parties affect the way in which judges reason and in consequence the character of legal rules.

The nature of my doctoral research inspired my interest in jurisprudence and theoretical questions concerning adjudication and judicial reasoning. Part of my research has involved transferring interpretational and theoretical observations concerning judicial practices onto the practice of the European Court of Justice. Through teaching EU Law to Oxford undergraduates I have been drawn into fundamental constitutional questions of European integration, especially concerning the third pillar and the status of EU secondary law in national legal orders, with a particular focus on obligations it generates for national judges.

In my post-doctoral research I would like to investigate the question of damages liability of a private party in Community law. My objective is to discuss how a general regime of private party liability in EC Law should be structured in order successfully to promote effectiveness, coherence and uniformity of application of Community norms, to respect legal traditions of the Member States and adequately to divide the spheres of competence between the Court of Justice and national courts.

In particular, I want to argue against using the rules of liability of the Community and the Member States as the model for private party liability rules and investigate what conditions of private party liability would ensure that EC law concerning this issue has proper normative justification and for this reason it contributes to, rather than hampers, legitimacy of the European legal order.

Before my doctoral studies at Oxford I achieved Master degrees from the University of Wrocław, Poland, and from the University of Oxford. During the last two years of my doctorate I was a college lecturer at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

Expertise for Teaching and Mentoring of Ph.D Researchers: EU constitutional law, EC law of remedies, damages liability in EC Law, comparative tort law, comparative methodology, theories of judicial reasoning