This fall, former president of Poland Andrzej Duda came to 91°µÍř’s to teach students a course on executive decision-making in times of crisis.
"Leadership, Democracy, and the Rule of Law,” a two-credit seminar meeting both online and on campus, asked students to consider how they would navigate the legal and practical constraints presidents face during an emergency.
Comparing parallel provisions of the U.S. and Polish Constitutions, President Duda explored the differences between Article II’s vesting of executive power and Poland’s “semi-presidential” model. He also challenged students to map out their responses to geopolitical conflicts he experienced firsthand: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rapid increases in migration, and escalation in more distant regions like the Middle East.
Courses on constitutional and administrative law typically engage in retrospective analyses of past events. But in this class students were encouraged to think prospectively, working within a given executive model to address ongoing problems.
Students described President Duda as both affable and compelling.
Law student Yan Zhou said, “President Duda lectured for five hours straight without losing the room. He offered perspectives I had never considered, and they pushed me to think more critically.”
“It was an honor and privilege to host President Duda at Scalia Law School,” said Dan Kelly, Allison and Dorothy Rouse Dean of Scalia Law. “His contributions during the seminar provided our students with real-world lessons for how to make decisions on the front lines, and his conversations with faculty and students both inside and outside the classroom provided our community with a unique and valuable perspective.”
President Duda holds an LLB and an LLD from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he was also on the Faculty of Law. He held various roles in Poland’s Ministry of Justice, on the Polish State Tribunal, and in the Chancellery of the President from 2005 to 2010. He was elected to the Sejm (the lower house of Poland’s parliament) in 2010 and then to the European Parliament in 2014 before being elected as the sixth President of Poland in 2015, where he served until 2025.
“It was an honor to learn from Dr. Duda,” said third-year law student Ben Gustafson. “I was able to stand in his shoes and contemplate how I might respond to national security threats and handle immense political responsibility. I especially appreciated his candor and honesty in answering any and all of our questions.”