Skip to main content
Have a personal or library account? Click to login
O humanizację i racjonalizację prawnej procedury określenia płci – przyczynek do dyskusji Cover

O humanizację i racjonalizację prawnej procedury określenia płci – przyczynek do dyskusji

Open Access
|Jun 2026

Abstract

The question of gender determination beyond the sex assigned at birth poses complex legal and normative challenges. In particular, the practice of adjudicating gender designation through contentious judicial proceedings has to date neither been formally endorsed by the legislature nor remained free from judicial critique. On the contrary, it was substantially repudiated in the 2025 resolution of the Polish Supreme Court, issued in response to a legal question submitted by the Prosecutor General on 8 September 2022. The Supreme Court’s intervention reflects a broader legal and societal concern about the adequacy of current procedures for gender recognition. While the rejection of arbitrary or unfounded gender declarations is justified in the interest of legal certainty, there remains a compelling need to humanize legal processes concerning gender – an area that touches on fundamental aspects of personal identity, dignity, and social integration. This article addresses the formal and legal implications of recognizing the possibility of determining an individual’s gender in a manner divergent from that indicated on their birth certificate. The aim is to explore whether such procedures should be differentiated depending on the specific circumstances of individual cases.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15290/bsp.2026.31.02.01 | Journal eISSN: 2719-9452 | Journal ISSN: 1689-7404
Language: English, Polish
Page range: 11 - 33
Submitted on: Jun 30, 2025
Accepted on: Mar 26, 2026
Published on: Jun 26, 2026
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 issues per year

© 2026 Edyta Anna Gapska, published by University of Białystok
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.