| Summary: | Starting from the content of John Paul II’s homily delivered on 1 June 1991 in Koszalin, the author tries to answer the question: can a political community function only on the basis of formal procedures or must it recognise values which precede it and which are not its own creation? The modern conception of the state was based on the idea of a social contract, in which the parties give up some of their own freedom to a political community. The social contract involves an exchange of giving up the potential for danger to others. The disadvantage of such a contractual conception is that it leaves outside the realm of justice those who are so weak that they have nothing to offer in a contract conceived as an exchange. In his article, the author defends the concept of natural justice, which is not established by any community but is a consequence of the objective truth about the human person. A just state is a state governed by the rule of law, based on unnegotiable values that are an expression of the truth about the human person.
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