The Roman Republic struggled with many pathologies. These included usury, exces- sive profligacy, excesses in food and drink, gambling and political corruption. These phenomena caused far-reaching negative social consequences, so the state tried to eliminate them by means of laws. Their history clearly shows that they were extremely ineffective. They were published with noble intentions of improving customs in a broad sense and stopping the negative phenom- enon of the disappearance of the features of the former ethos. They were an expression of the noble but somewhat naive faith presented by the Roman legislator that a problem could be solved by means of a law. This faith was shaken many times, and the reality of the functioning of these regulations proves that the society will always find a way to circumvent regulations that are not adapted to the conditions in which it lives.

The article deals with the problem of the application of the Roman principle alteri stipulari nemo potest, which expresses the prohibition of the conclusion of contracts in favour of a third party and direct representation. It shows the understanding of this principle and its justi- fication in relation to the requirements of the contract of stipulation and the principles governing the Roman formula process. Exceptions to this principle have also been outlined, allowing the reservation of the benefit to a third party in the event of the existence of a contestable interest of a party to the contract and the reservation of a contractual penalty. The issue of concluding con- tracts by subordinates (slaves, children subject to paternal authority) with effect on their superior and the responsibility of the superior has been discussed in more detail.

In the process of political and legal transformations in Silesia, initiated in 1327, the events that took place in 1336 deserve more attention. The earliest one concerns the transfor- mation of the Duchy of Wrocław into the hereditary Duchy of the Czech Crown, where the governor’s rule on behalf of the king would be held from then on by the land starost until 1742. The next one deals with the feudalisation of the first of the still free dukes of the Świdnicko­ Jaworsk line, Bolko Ziębicki. The next one refers to the resignation of the rights to the Duchy of Ścinawa by its former liege duke from the Silesian Piast dynasty, Jan ścinawski, in favour of the Czech king, John of Bohemia, in exchange for lifetime governor’s rule in the Duchy of Głogów. The next one is connected with the childless death of the Upper Silesian Duke Leszek of Racibórz in 1336, which in 1337 would be the cause of a spectacular dispute over the inherit- ance rights after him. These events provoke an attempt to evaluate the Silesian policy of John of Bohemia and Casimir the Great after the Visegrad Congress of 1335.

The author shows the medieval village of Konary, whose name indicates that it was a servile village of the Konary castellan of Cracow. However, in the 14th century, it was an “ordinary” castellany run by Mikołaj from Grodzina. The estate in the village was divided by two families: knights from Grodzina village of the Szreniawa coat of arms and those from Koszyce (district of Pilsen) of the Ostoja coat of arms. The article is a description of legal transactions with their participation.

The aim of the article is to show that Piotr Rojzjusz, Judge of the Royal Arbitral Court in Vilnius, applied Roman law as a criterion for interpretation in relation to Magdeburg law. Roman law served to interpret the meaning of doubtful notions of German law. The author was also an advocate of the subsidiary application of Roman law in the case of loopholes in national laws. His work entitled Decisiones [...] de rebus in sacro auditorio Lituanico ex appel- latione iudicatis (Kraków 1565) is a commentary on five judgments. The basis of the verdict is Magdeburg law, but the author’s arguments are full of references to Roman law and the works of glossators and commentators.

Many royal privileges have been preserved from the Jagiellonian period, releasing the townsmen from the obligation to pay taxes. The entries of these regulations appear both in the books of the royal register (often in an abbreviated form) and in the form of diplomas, sometimes incorporated into city cartularies. An increasing number of the abovementioned regulations is visible in the royal register, especially since the reign of Sigismund I, which can be explained by both greater care taken to enter the temporary acts into the register, and the intensification of issuing such regulations in view of the increasingly frequent (ultimately regular) adoption of the urban revenue tax in Sejm. Tax liberations in the Jagiellonian period belonged to the exclusive competence of the king; therefore, these documents belonged to leges speciales passed in opposi- tion to the revenues binding for all, and thus falling into the category of the Polish ius commune. The tax privileges served primarily to help cities ruined by natural disasters and war turmoil. The period of exemption depended on the type of tax, while the goal of liberation was most fully achieved by longer exemptions from the basic tax — the royal urban revenue tax. The much shorter period of exemption from the excise tax was justified by its consumption character and the fact that it was an indirect tax, as the buyer of the goods was in fact charged for its costs. The circumstances in which the tax exemptions were issued make the tax liberation privileges a sad testimony to frequent fires, which in the vast majority of cases consumed the wooden build- ings of the towns of the Jagiellonian era.

The right to vote is either active or passive; it means the right to vote and to be elected. During the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the fundamental principles of the political system was the right to “free election” of the king. It was understood as electio viritim, i.e. casting a vote by each nobleman. This was considered to be the greatest success of the noble nation in the Republic of Poland. In the passive aspect, electoral law was not a subject of broader considerations in contemporary journalism and public life. This issue requires scientific research, taking into account the provisions of Henrician Articles and pacta conventa.

In the years 1644—1655 the Faculty of Law of the Vilnius Academy published sev- eral publications of professors working there and promoted doctors of both laws (utriusque iuris). Some of them covered Roman law. The dissertation of Benedict de Soxo, Claves juris, contains numerous Romanistic motifs. The Rector of the Vilnius Academy discussed terms, phrases and principles rooted in Roman law. Also, considerations concerning the sources of law, its interpre- tation or the teaching of law had their romanistic roots.

Aaron Aleksander Olizarowski, professor at the Faculty of Law of the Vilnius Academy, in his work De politica hominum societate, published in Gdańsk in 1651, made numerous references to Roman law. Most of the romanistic themes were included in the first book, De Domo, when discussing issues related to marriage and family.

In 1650 Jan Marquarta wrote a dissertation on Roman law entitled De damno injuriae, which was the only dissertation on this legal matter at the Vilnius Academy in the years 1644—1655. Although the work concerned damage and liability for damages, its author additionally presented the historical development of sources of law in ancient Rome. The content and structure of the dissertation testifies to the good romanistic background of its author.

The works referring in their content to Roman law, in the initial period of functioning of the Faculty of Law of the Vilnius Academy, testify to its important role in science and teaching at university law studies.

Jean­ Jacques Rousseau is primarily a social philosopher. His theories of a social contract, of sovereignty of the people, and of general will are basic concepts in the philosophy of law and political and economic thought. Although associated with the Enlightenment as an epoch in which the achievements of the sciences based on reason and experiment were paid tribute, Rousseau appeared as a thinker trying to undermine this fact. From the very beginning of his work, he has been building a worldview that can be seen as a manifestation of rebellion against the uncritical domination of the rational. He does not accept the negation of irrational factors, to which he proposes to give their rightful place, both in the individual’s educational process, and on the social and political level. He considers the proper development of the emotional and voli- tive sphere to be the best medicine that can help solve all the problems of life of people with which our intellect is unable to cope.

Teofila Konstancja Morawska came from a powerful Lithuanian family of Radziwiłł dukes. However, her husband, Ignacy Feliks Morawski, was a much lower ranked nobleman. In 1773, Teofila Morawska and a small group of her companions set off on a journey through Europe. The route of this journey led through Prussia and other German countries, France, Swit- zerland, and finally numerous Italian countries. The return journey led, among others, through Austria and the Czech lands.

The result of this journey was a diary written by Morawska, in which she described not only the landscapes and monuments visited, but also events connected with the law of the countries where she was allowed to stay. The observations made by her concern the systems of states, administrative regulations, especially those directly affecting travellers, customs and passport regulations, as well as court law. The traveller was particularly interested in the execution of sentences, she described prisons and places of execution.

The observations recorded in the diary are usually precise and do not contain gross errors. The traveller above all recorded what she saw or heard, but from time to time she also added her own comments. Some of these remarks may indicate that the traveller was no stranger to the ideas of the Enlightenment.

The reform of royal land proposed during the Great Sejm (also known as Four-Year Sejm) became a reality on 23rd of December 1791 when the Sejm passed the law on Principles of Preparing the Perpetual Sale of Royal Land. The planned sale was regulated in the following year when the law on Urządzenie wieczyste królewszczyzn was enacted on 26th of April.

This statute of 1792 provided for the transfer of royal land into private property. The prop- erty was supposed to generate regular income intended to cover military expenses. That is why the buyers paid only part of the price (one-fifth) and then they were obliged to pay a perpetual rent which could never be bought out. It amounted to 4% per annum of the outstanding price. In case of a war, the 1792 law provided the opportunity to gain some cash for the state by requir- ing the possessors of the sold royal land to give the Treasury a loan.

The analysis of the relevant provisions led to the conclusion that the Act catered to the needs of the buyers rather than the state. Purchasing a manor did not require a substantial amount of cash, and it was profitable despite paying the rent. The Act did not protect the land against frag- mented ownership, which put the expected income at risk. Gaining cash would take too long to contribute towards the defence if Poland were at war. The rent from the royal land buyers would not be obtained in full until the expiry of rights belonging to the existing possessors. The Act was not beneficial to the Treasury.

The 1792 Act never really came into force. After the partition of Poland, the royal land re- mained public property, and it was exploited in various ways by treasury departments.

The article presents organisational principles and forms of activity of the “medical police” of the Free City of Cracow (1815—1846), with particular emphasis on the tasks of the protomedic and two physicists: the urban and regional physicists. The “governmental instruc- tions” for the physicists, adopted by the Senate in 1844, have been subjected to a detailed analy- sis. Their content demonstrates that the main tasks of the “health officials” were to take care of the health of the inhabitants of Cracow and the district, including preventing and combating epidemics, controlling the food sold, taking care of the sanitary conditions in hospitals, police detention centres, the building of Criminal Prisons, etc., as well as supervision over doctors, surgeons, midwives and pharmacists, combating the activities of charlatans and unlicenced mid- wives, carrying out vaccinations, carrying out health examinations of “public women,” preparing court and medical opinions, issuing death certificates, examining slaughtered animals, etc. For the purposes of the article, the names of persons appointed as protomedics and physicists havebeen identified. The text is based primarily on archival materials stored in the National Archive in Cracow (the “Archive of the WMK”) and in the Archive of the Jagiellonian University.

The modernisation of Turkish commercial law is a process which has been continu- ing for 170 years and constitutes an important part of the modernisation process of the Turkish law system. The modernisation process of the Turkish commercial law which started in 1850 by Kanunname­i Ticaret (Codex of Commerce) has continued after the establishment of the Repub- lic of Turkey in 1923, by Code of Commerce numbered 865 in 1926, Turkish Code of Commerce numbered 6762 in 1956, and lastly Turkish Code of Commerce numbered 6102 in 2011. This long process has just one clear purpose: modernisation. Although this process can only be perceived as being Westernised or Europeanised, this perception is incorrect. In fact, at the core of this process, the aim is to rise to the level of developed civilisations and to adapt to the developed modern legal systems.

During his short stay in Wrocław in the course of his studies, Jan Kasprowicz was also very active in politics. It was connected with his participation in the organisation called “Pa- cyfik” [“Pacific”], which was associated with German social democracy. For this reason, he was arrested and tried in one of the largest trials in Germany performed on the basis of anti-socialist laws. Due to the fact that he was a Pole, he received one of the most severe sentences in the trial in Wrocław in 1887. Jan Kasprowicz’s stay in Wrocław was one of the most difficult periods in his life. As a result of the Wrocław experience, he finally gave up political activity and took up exclusively literary activities.

From November 1918 to January 1924, the town of Fiume (Rijeka) was in fact the sovereign territory over which Italy and the Kingdom of SHS disputed. The city was ruled by the Italians, but Rome did not decide to annex it without the consent of the allied powers. During the five years of independence there were various forms of political system in Fiume, and from September 1919 until the end of 1920 dictatorial power was held by the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. After he had taken power, he decided that the city would elect a member of the Roman parliament to emphasise the will to join Italy. The rules for election were laid down in the Decree of 14 October 1919, the provisions of which were clearly different from the Italian electoral law of that time and also from the city’s rules for electing the National Council. Unlike in Italy, women were allowed to vote. The elections were held on 16 November 1919, and only one candidate, Luigi Rizzo, whose election was not recognised by the Italian authorities, stood for a mandate.

The aim of this article is to present a hitherto unknown episode from the life of the Polish romanist Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski, connected with his attempt to obtain a full pro- fessorship at the University of Lviv. This scientist moved from Freiburg to Lviv at the end of the 19th century, where he continued his academic career. In 1903, the matter of occupying the chair of Roman law arose, and the romanist was one of the two candidates put forward, beside Marceli Chlamtacz. Eventually, the application for appointment, addressed to the Ministry, included only the name of Chlamtacz. This provoked opposition from some scholars who formulated a dissent- ing opinion in defence of Koschembahr-Łyskowski. The intention of the author of this study is to analyse this previously unknown document prepared in defence of Koschembahr-Łyskowski.

From 2017 onwards “Karta” centre has been publishing a six-volume series of Michał Römer’s Dzienniki, journals, covering the period from the end of the partitions of Poland to the years of World War II. The third volume, published in 2018, covers the years 1916—1919 and contains notes on the work of Römer in the Polish judiciary from 1917, i.e. the establishment of royal-Polish courts. The article presents Römer as a justice of the peace in Kolno from September 1917 to November 1918. It presents in the introduction a short biographical outline of the author, then characterises the royal-Polish judiciary in the area of the Governorate-General of Warsaw and the judiciary in the Łomża district. Römer’s comments and judgments pass through the whole deliberations, and — especially in the third part of the text — his significant and profound reflections on both the judicial work in Kolno and the profession of judge have been exposed. Römer treated his duties as a mission and carried them out with integrity and good service to the local community. His general comments on the duties of judges are still valid and testify to his insight into the essence of the profession.

In November 1918, Poland regained its independence. However, it was the beginning of building the borders of the reborn country. Before the Vilnius region was incorporated into Poland in 1922, in the years 1919—1920 the Polish Army and the Polish administration organ- ised into the Civil Administration of the Eastern Lands exercised control over the area. Within its framework, the Polish justice system was created, whose functioning in its adopted form was interrupted and ultimately ended by the Bolshevik summer invasion (1920).

The centenary of Poland’s regaining independence is conducive to reflections on the achievements of the last 100 years, including the legal achievements of the interwar period. The Codification Commission, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2019, played an important role in the creation of the law of the Second Republic of Poland. Professors at the Jagiellonian University, including F.K. Fierich, the first President of the Commission in 1919—1928; F. Zoll, S. Gołąb, T. Dziurzyński, W.L. Jaworski, S. Wróblewski, M. Rostworowski, A. Górski, E. Krzy- muski, took an active part in its work. The work of the commission on the Polish nature conser- vation law of 1934 was inspired by professor at Jagiellonian University, W. Szafer. The influence of Cracow scholars on the shape of law was also exercised through participation in the works on the Constitution of 17 March 1921, participation in debates and discussions on the shape of vari- ous legal solutions in the field of, among others, the system of academic schools and the training of lawyers, shaping borders, creating acts of executive authorities by virtue of their functions as prime minister and ministers (among others, A. Benis, M. Bobrzyński, S. Estreicher, K.W. Ku- maniecki, S. Kutrzeba, J. Nowak, W. Wróblewski).

The crisis of parliamentary democracy in the Weimar Republic reached its peak in 1932. Successive governments, especially of Brüning and von Papen, took steps towards inde- pendence of the executive from parliamentary power. Their activity was supported by the policy of the President of the Hindenburg Reich. This alliance was supposed to theoretically ensure strong executive rule and consolidate the political superiority of conservative forces. The instru- ment of these actions was Article 48 of the Constitution, under which Hindenburg could issue emergency ordinances by bypassing the parliament. Conservatives were also supported by rep- resentatives of the legal sciences, who saw Article 48 as an effective instrument of dictatorship.

The opposition was relatively weak and, what is more, it saw a political interest in support- ing conservative governments. The conservatives, united occasionally against the left, fought for power against the Nazis.

The conflict between the Reich and Prussia, which ended with the judgment of 25 Octo- ber 1932, was the quintessence of this process. It aimed at the subordination of Prussia to the Reich and relied on a policy of applying the facts made justified by normative acts contrary to the constitution. Proceedings before the Supreme Court also revealed the political attitudes of representatives of the science of law. A group of conservative professors legitimized without any resistance the illegal order established in Prussia.

The break­up of democracy in Prussia opened the way to the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. In most cases, the representatives of the legal science started to legitimize the new order against the traditions and values of the rule of law.

The institution of judicial and penal superior, which appeared in the political model of the field judiciary in the Polish Army in the years 1918—1921, was taken over from the audito- riats of the invading armies. Commanders of operational unions (army or fronts) served as court and penal superiors for all courts located in the headquarters of large units or in their operational area, for the state of a personal operational union and for the civilian population in the opera- tional area. The commander of an operational union, operational group or Stage District, could require a legal clerk or commander of a large unit reporting to him, as his or her judicial and criminal superior, to implement a preliminary inquiry or investigation into any case. He also had the right to approve or refuse to approve the judgments of field courts, and at a critical time of the war in 1920, also the right to shape the judicial penalties for officers and soldiers of the Polish Army. Judicial and penal superiors replaced courts of second instance in the process of control- ling court judgements, and the equipping of military commanders with these powers was dictated by the need to enforce obedience to orders and the need to shape military discipline. The practice of field courts indicates that judicial and penal superiors of the operational level exercised their judicial powers through court judges’ chambers, and the opinions of military lawyers submitted to them were honoured and respected. The task of legal experts was functioning as a transmis- sion belt between the Headquarters of the Field Judiciary of the Polish Army and commanders of operational unions and field courts, as well as providing legal services to army commanders and troops. This judicial system “in the field”, despite periodic difficulties, proved its worth in the years of wars over the borders of the reborn Republic of Poland.

The article is a legal and political sketch connected with the issue of regaining inde- pendence by Poland in 1918. In principle, however, it focuses on questions concerning the causes and reasons that led to, or made possible, the recovery of independence, extending these prob- lems to the years 1914—1922, when a complicated process of national revival took place during World War I, up to the moment when the Polish state was fully formed in 1922.

The Regional Court in Zamość was established on 1 June 1918. When Poland re- gained its independence, it was staffed by the President, 4 regional judges, one of whom was a vice-president, 4 examining magistrates, a prosecutor and 3 subcurators. By the end of 1928, preceding the introduction of the judicial reform, there were 2 vice-presidents, additional posts for regional judges, a reserve examining magistrate and a sub-prosecutor. The President of the Regional Court in Zamość at that time was Romuald Jaśkiewicz. The first structure of the court was based on lawyers of Galician provenance, but most of them were soon transferred to the for- mer Prussian Quarter in order to strengthen the Polish judiciary organised there, or left to serve in new central institutions of the Reborn Polish State. The vacant positions were filled by local sub-curators, examining judges and magistrates, as well as lawyers coming to the country from Russia, which was engulfed in civil war, who often had extensive judicial experience. The stories of their return to their homeland illustrate the complicated fate of Poles in the civil war-stricken Russia. It was very difficult to recruit local sworn attorneys or notaries for courts in Zamość. The reason was not only a small number of lawyers of Polish origin in the eastern part of the former Lublin province, but also the low salary of the regional judge.

Already in that period, examining judges, and sometimes sub-curators and magistrates, were sent to substitute trainee judges, which became the norm over time. The personnel turnover in these positions was high, sometimes associated with promotion to the positions of regional judges. In the years 1918—1928, 6 examining judges, 2 sub-curators and 5 magistrates of the peace were promoted directly to the positions of regional judges in the Zamość region. Some distinguished judges, after being retired, received lucrative notarial positions. Among them was President Romuald Jaśkiewicz and 4 regional judges.

The article is the analysis of the materials of “The Trident” Weekly, published by the emigration government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Paris from 1925 to 1940. The editorial board paid particular attention to the repressions performed by of the communist re- gime, which the editors equated with the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Among the key topics that were raised by the weekly were the coverage of the activities of Soviet repressive bodies in Ukraine, political trials of Ukrainian intellectuals and clergy, mass repressions against the Ukrainian peasantry, and the organisation of the intentional famine of 1932—1933. The main theme of the publications of the weekly is the statement that after the occupation of Ukraine by Soviet Russia, a totalitarian regime was established here, which, like its czarist predecessor, car- ried out imperial policy to keep it under control.

The global economic crisis, lasting since 1929, led to a collapse on the Polish insur- ance market. As a consequence, numerous insurance companies went bankrupt and Powszechny Zakład Ubezpieczeń Wzajemnych [Mutual Insurance Company], the largest insurer in the in- dustry, had to urgently implement a recovery programme. It consisted in taking greater care of income from insurance premiums, while at the same time tightening the compensation payment system. As a result of sound financial policy, the PZUW authorities managed to survive and even strengthen the company’s position in the insurance industry. However, the outstanding premiums seriously burdened the insurer’s balance sheet, and this problem was not solved until the outbreak of World War II.

In order to ensure the balance of budgets of local government associations in inter- war Poland, it was often necessary to establish additional sources of income, not provided for in the Act of 11 August 1923 on Temporary Regulation of Municipal Finance (in force until 1946). These included, among others, an autonomous countervailing tax for rural communes, which in its original form was in force only in 1924 and only in the territory of the former Russian parti- tion. Later legislation systematically extended the time during which rural communes (from 1931 onwards in the whole country) could charge an autonomous countervailing tax. It turned out that this temporary tax — in the intentions of the legislator — survived to the end of interwar Poland and was the most significant revenue item among the budgets of rural communes.

The subject of the discussion is the instance of recidivism in the Criminal Code of 1932. The main discussion is preceded by a brief description of the formation of criminal liabil- ity of persons returning to crime in the work of the codification committee established to unify criminal legislation after Poland gained independence in 1918. Then, the premises for recidivism specified in Article 60 of the Penal Code and the criminal consequences of returning to crime are analysed, taking into account the positions of doctrine and judicature.

The first two Soviet constitutions (the RSFRR in 1918 and the USSR in 1924) re- mained silent on the political role of the Communist Party, although they regulated the ideologi- cal goals of the system. After the adoption of the first constitutional act, a discussion began on the legal way of regulating the role of the party. Its results were used in practice to a small extent, and only in the course of work on the third consecutive Soviet constitution.

The Constitution of 1936 legally anchored the Communist Party. Its congresses were not rec- ognised as a legislative body, but the working people of towns and villages — as constitutional sovereignty — were institutionalised through the actions of the party’s authorities. Additionally, the CPSU (b) gained a significant influence on the course of the elections, confirming in a legal sense their transformation into a system of universal voting.

As far as the status of the CPSU (b) is concerned, the Constitution of 1936 provides for the transition to treating the party as a specific state body, an element of constitutional sovereignty, and not only as an axis of the system of power; previously the scope of its authority was unlimit- ed, so was it the same at the moment? The fact of constitutionalisation of the Communist Party’s political position led to the law regulating its legal situation, which should have been intensified in the long run. It has to be said that only to a small extent did this happen.

The study is devoted to the institution of resumption of criminal proceedings in the practice of the Special Court in Katowice (1939—1945). It outlines the specificity of proceedings before special courts of the Third Reich. The legal prerequisites for resumption, resulting from the provisions of the Code of Penal Procedure (Strafprozessordnung), are discussed. Then, on the basis of the preserved archives, individual cases of attempts to resume proceedings in the most serious cases judged by the Sondergericht, ending with a death penalty, are presented.

This article is a part of a broader study. Two more parts are planned in which this issue will be continued. The aim of this publication is to present the competences of the German territorial administration bodies in the General Government in the years 1939—1940. They resulted from the regulations established by the German occupation authorities. The internal struc- ture of the study is based on a mixed criterion (substantive and chronological). In the first place, the regulations concerning administration at the district level are presented, in the second — at the poviat level, in the third — at the municipal level. Within these three parts, normative acts are referred to in chronological order.

The article concerns the penal trial of members of the Silesian intelligence service “Stragan” of the “U-2” group of the Home Army, who were accused of treason of the Third Reich and executed in 1944 after a short trial. They were intelligence agents, gathering data on the military and defence affairs of the Third Reich in Salzgitter in the mountains of Harz. The text shows the mechanisms of the justice system in the Third Reich, the way of conducting prepara- tory proceedings, and the trial itself. It also describes executions and the fate of the bodies of the convicted after the execution.

The present article is devoted to the subject of works on the codification and unifica- tion of law in Poland during World War II. It discusses the situation of Roman law as a scientific discipline and an academic subject in Poland after the end of World War II, which was largely due to the social and political changes that took place in our country at that time. Soviet law, which was a model for socialist civil law, negated the distinction between what was public and what was private, which was characteristic of Roman law. Negating the fundamental principles of the former private law was something unprecedented in the entire history of law. In fact, from mid-1918 Soviet civil law became public law. The process of unification, although complex and requiring the involvement of state authorities and the intellectual effort of lawyers, was a neces- sity. The process of unification of civil law resulted in the invalidation of almost all district civil law provisions.

Together with the change in the political situation in Poland after World War II, the communists set new tasks for the justice system — fighting against political opponents and pro- tecting the system.

Their implementation was to be ensured by discretionary judges and prosecutors. To this end, persons trained according to models that rejected European legal culture were introduced to the judicial authorities. Military lawyers were educated at the Officer Law School, established on 19 May 1948 by the Minister of National Defence. It was a secondary law school, which provided only a minimum of knowledge to graduates.

The state of current research in the field of criminal law in the first decade of the Polish People’s Republic undoubtedly testifies to the striking scale of punitiveness of the criminal law in the years 1944—1955. Expecting great social resistance during the implementation of the so-called agricultural reform, the first and fundamental element of the expropriatory action in the first years of the Polish People’s Republic, the People’s Government penalised the acts directed against this reform, placing them among crimes against the state, i.e. “counter-revolutionary crimes.” The most bizarre provision due to the disproportionality of the protected interest to the penalty was Article 7 of the Decree of 12 December 1944 on the taking over of certain forests by the State Treasury, which provided for the death penalty for thwarting or hindering the im- plementation of the transition of forests and forest lands to State ownership, or for incitement to acts directed against this transition or acts consisting in public praise for them. Nowadays, there is no doubt that a characteristic element of ownership transformations related to the so-called agricultural reform was the instrumental use of the law, including breaking the law (also the new one). There is also no doubt that the decree on implementing the agricultural reform violated elementary legal and justice principles adopted in the European legal culture.

The article presents the activity of departments dealing with cases in ad hoc proceed- ings from February to June 1946. The subject of the analysis is the Regional Court in Białystok. The research showed that at the same time there were two different departments with almost identical names. The first one was created in accordance with the decree on ad hoc proceedings of 16 November 1946. The second was a common court only by name. In order to obtain an ap- propriate tool for fighting the independence movement, officers and non-commissioned officers were temporarily delegated to common courts as judges, prosecutors and jurors. Importantly, these people did not enter the structures of the ad hoc departments of the regional courts, but came under the direct authority of the Ministry of Justice, and in fact under the military justice system. I call these departments the ad hoc civil-military courts because they combined the features of ordinary ad hoc courts with military courts, as well as KBW courts — which were constantly on the move, often changed their stopping place.

The article is devoted to the last years of the life of the outstanding Polish law- yer Juliusz Makarewicz. After 1944, he stayed in Lviv, despite incentives to leave for Wrocław. The memories of his pupils and letters to his family show that he did not see any difference be- tween post­war Poland and Soviet Lviv. In 1946, he made efforts to teach at the Faculty of Law of the sovietised University of Lviv. He was accepted as a non­regular professor. He lectured on the criminal law of the bourgeois countries. Soon after, proceedings were initiated against him, accusing him of not evaluating the bourgeois criminal law from the point of view of the commu- nist criminal law. In a letter addressed to the Ministry of Education in Moscow on 7 April, 1947, Juliusz Makarewicz explained why he had been lecturing using an encyclopaedic method rather than a comparative one. Throughout his life, he had been conducting comparative research on criminal law, giving lectures using the comparative method, and in Soviet Lviv he had discussed the criminal law of the so­called bourgeoisie, i.e. the democratic west, in an encyclopaedic way. Only in this way could he remain true to his views.

After the Second World War, the political system of Poland was rebuilt according to the model of the Soviet Union. However, the common courts were rebuilt on the basis of pre-war political regulations. The pre-war judges were admitted to the courts in large numbers, despite their attempts to maintain their independence. It was extremely difficult in the era of omnipresent Marxist-Lenin ideology, which permeated every area of life, and the primacy of politics over law. The authorities did not intend to tolerate the existence of a judiciary independent of their influ- ence. Without having their own legal forces, they tried to break judges’ characters. The judges were subjected to political and ideological indoctrination. When this did not produce satisfactory results, the government decided to replace the pre-war judicial staff for “new types of judges,” brought up in the spirit of obedience to the authorities in law schools, operating under the aus- pices of the Ministry of Justice. The replacement of staff was carried out in the years 1950—1954 by manipulating the system law, using the method of “administrative deportations,” disregarding any moral and ethical principles, the quality of jurisprudence and the welfare of citizens. This was done under the hypocritical guise of the “democratisation of the justice system” slogan.

In 1944, the new “people’s” government in Poland issued a decree on the implemen- tation of the agricultural reform. Acquisition of land ownership often took place in violation of the provisions of this legal act. After Stalin’s death, as part of the political “thaw,” those illegally deprived of their property began to demand the return of their land. The act issued in 1958 invalidated these attempts and legalised all of them, including the illegal annexation of land by the state. The circumstances of the law’s enactment clearly indicate that its aim was to finally deprive landowners of the right to all claims against the state. This law still blocks the reprivati- sation efforts against assets that were taken over in violation of the law on the basis of the decree on agricultural reform.

In spite of implementing in December 1951 in Polish People’s Republic the principle of collective adjudication with the participation of the social factor, the procedure of writ-of-pay- ment proceedings provided for the handling of petty offences without the participation of the de- fendant. The boards established at that time were adjudicating at the trial, while criminal orders were issued by the chairman of the board single-handedly. The basis for issuing a penal order was the information contained in the motions for punishment, which, given the fact that the law enforcement agencies did not carefully prepare these motions, led to the mechanical punishment of the defendants without examining the actual circumstances of the case. In the 1950s, writ-of- payment proceedings were used to a large extent to prevent the statute of limitations on adjudica- tion in cases which were not referred to the hearing before the board on time. It was common practice to issue penal orders in cases which, due to their gravity, should have been decided at the trial. After the problem of selection of motions for punishment under the order procedure had been resolved at the beginning of the 1960s, only minor offences were dealt with. Along with the gradual tightening of the repressive nature of Polish law on offences in the 1970s and 1980s, the significance of the writ-of-payment procedure decreased due to the possibility of imposing only small fines by way of a criminal injunction. The assumptions of the criminal policy adopted by the communist authorities in cases of misdemeanour were based on severe punishments imposed in order to combat the political opposition and intimidate the society.

This study concerns a selected institution of the Criminal Code of the Russian Fed- eration of 1960, i.e. the penalty of deprivation of liberty, and it consists of three parts. The first part shows the place and legal status of this punishment in comparison with other penalties in the 1960 Code. Its fundamental character is emphasised. Next, the scope of legal regulation of imprisonment is discussed (Article 24 of the Penal Code). Its time limits and categories of per- petrators subject to imprisonment as well as the place of execution of the sentence are presented. The possibilities of changing the places of imprisonment are also shown. The third part of the article presents the general state of crime registered in the analysed period, and discusses the dynamics of convicted persons. This has enabled to establish the relations between the scale of the phenomenon and the number of persons serving this isolation sentence. It has shown a strict practice of imposing prison sentences by Soviet courts. On the basis of dogmatic and statistical analyses, it has made it possible to recognise this punishment as an important instrument of lawand penal policy.

The image of the University of Silesia (UŚ) has been presented in various ways. The basic problem, which makes it possible to understand many mechanisms taking place in universi- ties in the times of totalitarian system domination, boils down to the evaluation of the authority of the people of the University, without which the essence of universitas does not exist. In 1981, the construction of opposition structures and the possibility of effective action to eliminate vari- ous abnormalities, especially when it came to systemic solutions, proved impossible.

After the institutional collapse of the totalitarian system, attempts were made to settle ac- counts, which often met with resistance from academic circles. At the University of Silesia, at the request of the company branch of the Solidarity Trade Union, no sooner than in April 2007 did the Senate of the University of Silesia pass a resolution to establish a Historical Commission, which was to analyse the attitudes of the University’s people in the past on the basis of the docu- ments of the Institute of National Remembrance and the University Archives. An opportunity arose to objectively examine not only the history of the institution, but also the attitudes of its employees.

The aim was to indicate not only negative examples of behaviour which were supposed to imply a violation of the principles of academic ethics, especially in the context arising from vetting statements, but also heroic attitudes of the employees of the University of Silesia in the years 1968—1990. The Commission’s reports were made public, either in the form of information about the works or in their entirety by the “Gazeta Uniwersytecka” daily. One of the most active members of the works of the Historical Committee of the University of Silesia Senate was its first Chairman — prof. zw. dr hab. Adam Lityński.

The subject of discussion is the issue of the implementation of political and crimi- nal assumptions of the Criminal Code of 1969 in the practice of the justice system in the years 1970—1980. The starting point of the analysis are the basic ideas concerning criminal policy adopted by the Criminal Code of 1969, i.e. stratification of crimes and polarisation of criminal responsibility, and the related striving to limit the scope of short-term imprisonment. In this context, in further considerations, statutory solutions — which were to implement the assump- tions adopted by the Criminal Code — have been discussed, and an important role in shaping current criminal policy of the guidelines for the judiciary and judicial practice, adopted by the Supreme Court, has been pointed out. The findings have served as a basis for the confrontation of political and criminal assumptions of the Penal Code of 1969 with judicial practice. For this purpose, findings have been made concerning the structure of the measures of penal reaction adjudicated for crimes prosecuted by public indictment in the years 1970—1980, the dimension of absolute imprisonment in 1970, 1975 and 1980, and the effects of the penal policy implemented in the form of the size of the prison population in the years 1970—1980. The presented picture of the practices has allowed to formulate several conclusions. It has turned out that the idea of polarisation of liability and the related aspiration to significantly reduce the use of absolute im- prisonment for non-custodian penalties was not achieved, and as a result of elimination of the shortest penalties (up to 3 months) and limitation of the use of short-term imprisonment penal- ties, the sentences imposed were significantly extended. The result of the conducted penal policy was a very significant size of the prison population, which confirmed that the penal policy was excessively repressive.

The paper presents the background to the introduction of the crime of betrayal of the Fatherland to the Penal Code of 1969. Due to the Soviet models and Article 79, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic of 1952, this issue was one of the main themes of considerations on the socialist criminal material law of the second half of the twen- tieth century.

The presented evolution of views in this area shows that they changed with the subsequent political upheavals of 1950—1969. The cases of Józef Światło and Paweł Monat posed a real threat to the communist authorities; therefore, counteracting them — also on a legislative basis — was one of the priorities of the codification of the criminal law of the Polish People’s Republic.

Marxist Romanistics meant a new trend in the study of Roman law, moving away from the formalism and dogmatism of traditional bourgeois Romanistics and juxtaposing it crea- tively with a new methodology of dialectic and historical materialism, with particular emphasis on class struggle. The place of this ideological expansion was, first and foremost, the countries which came under the influence of the USSR. The leading role was played by Czechoslovakian studies under the guidance of the Czech romanist, Professor Milan Bartošek, who was even con- sidered a “herald of Marxist Romanistics.” In other countries of the socialist bloc the romanists gave in to new influences to a lesser and more varied extent. Poland and Hungary retained the most independent position, the drastic exception being the German Democratic Republic, where the whole science of law was reduced in general, and Roman law as an academic subject and sci- entific discipline ceased to exist. Although history has outmoded these theses and programmes, including Marxist Romanistics, an interesting historical contribution to the history of Roman law has remained.

The article characterises various postulates in religious matters included in eleven constitutional projects from 1989 to 1991. The ground-breaking significance for constitutional legislation of three religious acts which were passed on 17 May 1989 has been pointed out.

An attempt has been made to determine to what extent the postulates concerning religious issues contained in the constitutional drafts and provisions of the religious acts were reflected in the text of the Constitution of 1997.