Legislation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Revolution, Patholegislation or Continuation?

The article presents some observations on the reality of law-making during the COVID-19 pandemic and the state of epidemic legislation. On the one hand, it confronts the contemporary experience of the changing legal system with the Enlightenment ideals of good law (such as, among others, rationality, hierarchy, consistency, predictability, clarity of regulations), and on the other hand, it justifies the thesis that these ideals have long been only an imagination not reflected in the legislative practice of continental European countries and Anglo-Saxon countries. Contrary to the belief that the challenges of COVID-19 led to the ‘state of emergency’, an ‘exception’ to the rule of law and good law-making—it is argued that for at least several decades, phenomena such as inflation of law, juridization of socio-economic life, and even postmodernization of the legal system or after the crisis of the law was a reality well known by lawyers, entrepreneurs, citizens and commentators. As a result, epidemic legislation is rather the culmination, continuation or intensification of previously observed negative trends, rather than a breakthrough or a new quality. According to the author, this state of affairs leads to the need to search for new instruments of description and understanding of the law in force—including innovative methods of interpreting provisions, legal reasoning and methods of argumentation.