Legal fiction is a “lie of law” that entails acknowledging a contradiction with reality in order to produce the desired legal effect. The article presents the role of legal fictions in several legal orders, such as Roman law (fictio legis Corneliae, fictio postliminii), canon law (e.g., legal representation, legal person, majority voting), medieval Polish law. The article also presents the requirements for the validity of legal fictions, advocated by medieval legal science, namely that they can only come from the legislator and only for reasons of equity and the common good.

Persons crossing the border between duty districts — traders, professional smug- glers and regular travelers alike — tried to avoid paying duties collected in such places all along. There were different ways to avoid paying the portorium: travelers either tried to conceal the real nature of the commodities they were carrying, or attempted to transport the goods they carried without declaring them, or tried to cross the customs border without actually passing through the levy collection point. Meanwhile, the collectors frequently abused their powers by extorting pay- ments that were not due altogether or by collecting payments that were too high. Sources provide numerous evidence of such practices. A collector receiving a payment that was not due or that was too high ran the risk of having to pay back at least double the amount received. Respective imperial regulations leave no doubt in this regard. However, what about the commodity that was forfeited, if the process took too long?

The author presents a situation where the discovery of a correct copy of a medieval document influences our knowledge of history. The Rożnów family descended not from the sub- equerry Gedka, but from his unknown brother.

At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, a movement calling for the reform of the Catholic Church began to crystallize in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Based on the teachings of John Wiklif and later — John Hus, attempts were made to influence the church hierarchy at the grassroots level and convince them to make the necessary changes, and actually follow the doctrines they preached. Unfortunately, Hus' teaching was condemned, he was summoned to the Council of Constance, and despite having a safe-conduct voucher from the Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, he was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415. This event led to the radicalisation of a large part of the population of the Bohemian Kingdom. The attempts to forcefully stop the growing religious, social and national turmoil led to the outbreak of a revolution in 1419, which lasted until 1437. This article is an attempt to present the Hussite programme and its practical implementation with regard to revolutionary change of the legal system. Which legal norms did the Hussites reject and why, and how did they want to replace them?

The author noted that it took a considerable amount of time to enforce the claims indicated in the title, due to reluctant attitude of the King towards the requests for restitution of property, frequent postponement of court hearings to the next meeting of the lower chamber of the Polish parliament and defects in the court procedure. Another reason was the parliamentary court itself, which did not operate efficiently, and as a result there were numerous delays in the hearing of cases. During the reigns of August II and August III, this court operated infrequently as a result of the Parliament crisis.

The author shows how in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the prerogative of the English monarch was, in its various strands, superseded by the ever-increasing ambitions of the Parliament to become the sovereign in charge of the nation. The areas of conflict between the Crown and the Parliament over royal prerogative discussed by the author include, i.a., the law creation process, with the emerging points of contention (pressure on the monarch not to refuse sanctions on bills passed by the chambers, the issues of suspension and dispensation, etc.). The author also devotes attention to Parliament's continuing attempts to influence the shape of the royal ministry. In this area, the chambers did not hesitate to act per fas per nefas, holding royal ministers (e.g. Strafford or Danby) accountable by impeachment, actually bringing political rather than criminal charges against them. The author also discusses areas where the monarch too easily gave up his prerogative powers (e.g. with regard to verifying the correctness of the election of MPs to the Commons).

In autumn 1716 Cracow witnessed the great trial of a chieftain of Beskid robbers, no- bleman Antoni Złotkowski and his companions. One of the accused was Mikołaj Puchalski, who had been arrested together with Złotkowski. In the Cracow trial his participation in robberies was not proved and he could not be sentenced. We also know that this was not the only attempt to bring him to justice. Probably, he had been arrested earlier and detained in the castle prison in Nowy Wiśnicz, but also then there was not enough evidence against him. For the third time Puchalski stood trial in April 1717. It was again the criminal court of the city of Nowy Wiśnicz. This time his participation in several robberies was proved (mainly on the basis of his own testi- mony) and he was sentenced to beheading and corpse quartering. The materials collected during this last trial allow us to assume that earlier detentions of Puchalski were not groundless. Even if he did not actively participate in robberies, it is likely that he had at that time connections with the criminal world. It turns out that judges who then decided about his fate did not draw hasty conclusions and were fully aware of the necessity to prove the defendant guilty.

In 1760, the nobility of the Słonim poviat launched an initiative for law reform. Jerzy Michalski once suspected that it was aimed at drafting the Fourth Statute of Lithuania. However, the draft prepared by the noblemen attached to the instructions for members of the Parliament is not known. A draft of changes regarding the court system, prepared two years earlier by the nobility of the same poviat, has been preserved in Vilnius. This article outlines the content of the latter.

Among the sources of law in the Duchy of Warsaw, the rules and customs in force in the Republic before its collapse played a significant role. The judgments published in the "Journal of Judgments of the Court of Cassation of the Duchy of Warsaw" are vital for understanding the judiciary practice, as well as for the sources of substantive and procedural law of that time. The analysis of judgments of the Court of Cassation of the Duchy of Warsaw shows that this court rarely relied on pre-partition law.

In The Chronicles [Kroniki], published in the most widely read Warsaw newspapers between 1874 and 1912, Bolesław Prus penetrated all nooks and crannies of Warsaw life — also the hidden parts that reflected the second life of the city, which were the object of legal regula- tions. He left behind the Chronicles [Kroniki], which are a valuable source of information about legal life in Warsaw during this period. This picture, not always in accordance with the rule of law, was portrayed masterfully.

The Russian Empire invaded the North Caucasus in the 19th century. It was mainly Cossacks who settled there. The local population was Islamic, which made them closer to Persia and the Ottoman Empire. After the 1917 revolution in Russia, the North Caucasus was the scene of battles between the “white”, “red” forces and local population with the Cossacks. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks won and incorporated the area into the USSR.

The article presents an analysis of the circumstances surrounding creation of the office of the General Delegate of the Government for Galicia (1919—1921), its position in the political system, and the range of tasks undertaken in the first months of its activity. The his- tory of this governmental-administrative institution is not as well-known as that of other public administration structures from the beginning of Polish statehood. The sources for this study are archival materials from Lviv and Cracow. The administrative activities of the General Delegate in the spring of 1919 were reconstructed on the basis of the first report on his activities to the government, and supplemented with circulars issued by the Delegate for his subordinate offices. They provided a picture of both legal and organisational position of the General Delegate and documented the manner in which this institution carried out the duties entrusted to it regarding preservation of order and security, which corresponded to the competences of the Governor of Galicia in Austrian times. The article also includes a discussion about the stance of General Del- egate K. Galecki in the dispute over the model of administrative system in the lands of the former Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

On 24th June 1925, the Minister of Treasury issued an ordinance on the organisation of fiscal control. It entered into force on 1st September 1925 on the area of the treasury offices in Grudziądz, Poznań, Cracow and Lviv, as well as in Upper Silesia, and on 1st January 1926 — on the territory of the treasury offices in Białystok, Brześć, Kielce, Lublin, Łódź, Łuck, Warsaw and Vilnius. At the same time, the ordinance abolished the Treasury Guard Regulation [Przepis dla straży skarbowej] of 19th March 1907, which had been in force in the territory of the former Austrian partition, as well as the “regulations and ordinances” in force in other districts.

Earlier, by the ordinance of 21st January 1920, the Minister of Treasury had ordered that the executive bodies established to oversee state income by means of indirect taxes (excise duties) and monopolies on the territory of the former Russian partition and in Malopolska region should be called “fiscal control”.

The powers of the said bodies and of the executive bodies, excise and state monopoly pro- vided for in tax offices (created under the Act of 31st July 1919 on the temporary organisation of tax authorities and offices and the implementive ordinance issued on its basis) were united by the Act of 14th December 1923 on the powers of the executive tax authorities and the implementive ordinance issued on its basis. These were subsumed under the common name ‘fiscal control’.

The idea of communism contained the promise that we simply needed to abolish private property, make the state the entity that manages the means of production in a centralised manner, and the death of the state would automatically follow. Yet, already the 19th century, the anarchists, especially Mikhail A. Bakunin, warned that the attempt to implement this project must end in all-encompassing despotism. However, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels remained committed to their communist ideals throughout their whole life, because the semi-religious uto- pian fantasies prevailed in them over the strenuous efforts of researchers trying to understand human history. In such a situation, the founders of Marxism would unknowingly articulate the ideological justification for the interests of a caste of professional revolutionaries, the future rul- ers of the communist utopia, in this way contributing to the establishment of a new ruling class in the socialist state.

Nowadays, it seems obvious that there are strong political ties between the legislature and the executive, whereas in a situation of a tyrannical parliamentary majority the government is de facto deprived of the attribute of at least relative independence from the party's "top". The political will, the source of which are the people, is being distorted: the parliament and the government pursue their own goals, in dissociation not only from some abstractly conceivable public interest but also from the principles of order set out in the constitution. It is therefore the role of the judiciary to correct the executive and the legislature. The judicial power to review statutes became apparent in the decision of the Reich Supreme Court of 28th November 1923. The theoretical justification for the power of judges and courts came from Erich Kaufmann.

The clash of ideas regarding the nature of marriage took a specific form in the Polish lands during the partitions and after Poland regained independence (1918). The variety of laws in force at that time (German Burgeliches Gesetzbuch of 1896, Hungarian Act no. XXXI on mar- riage of 1894, Russian ukase on marriage of 1863, the first part of Volume X and partly the first part of Volume XI of the Digest of laws of the Russian Empire of 1832, and Austrian civil code of 1811) posed a challenge to the interwar codifiers and legal practitioners. The premises for the validity of marriage in civil law in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century were still of a mixed nature — they partly derived from religious principles (e.g. the impediment of differences of faith or priestly ordination), and partly from secular principles of Roman law (the impediment of age, kinship, affinity, adoption, bigamy and defects in the declaration of will). Against this background, the Hungarian Marriage Law must be assessed as modern.

On the basis of the Constitutional Act of 15th July 1920, which guaranteed the Sile- sian Voivodeship extensive self-governing rights, known in practice as the autonomy, a num- ber of interesting constitutional solutions arose that had been previously absent from the Polish constitutional systems. Their practice initiated implementation of instruments characteristic of a constitutional state, determining the scale of democratic systems. One of such instruments was a parliamentary question.

The article consists of three parts:. The first one — a short introduction — presents the process of creation of the Silesian Voivodeship in the Second Republic, both its post-Austrian and post-Prussian part. The second part of the article presents the takeover of the justice system in the former Prussian district. Although it did not concern Upper Silesia directly, the solutions applied in Greater Poland and Pomerania were transferred in their essence to Upper Silesia; the article presents also the system of administrative courts in force in this area before regaining independence. The third part — the main one — discusses the structure of the administrative courts in the Silesian Voivodship. Apart from general administrative courts, the article focuses also on the problem of administrative litigation in mining cases. The article ends with some re- marks regarding official language in proceedings before the Silesian administrative courts.

The article concerns the register of Polish and German graves from the period of the Silesian Uprisings in the territory of the Pszczyna poviat. It was here that the Silesian Uprisings began, and the Pszczyna poviat was considered to be the origin of the uprising. The inhabitants' involvement in the uprising was shown through the losses suffered by the members of the Polish Military Organisation of Upper Silesia and the German soldiers on the other side of the conflict. Thanks to these data, it is possible to assess both the losses and the personal contribution of the Pszczyna poviat to Poland's independence and incorporation of part of Upper Silesia to the Moth- erland. Considering that this material has not been published before and is based on preserved archives, it is an answer to many research postulates concerning this topic.

The article presents the genesis and legal basis for the functioning of Polish maritime courts in Great Britain between 1941 and 1945. An important part of the study is dedicated to the circumstances surrounding the enactment of the Allied Powers Maritime Courts Act of 1941 and the impact of this regulation on Polish law.

The article presents also changes to the criminal laws then in force, both procedural and sub- stantive.

Further on, the article describes the backstage of the appointment of the judges to the mari- time courts as well as the efforts of Ministers Herman Libermann and Karol Popiel to provide them with a guarantee of judicial independence.

The article is devoted to the 1943 émigré elaboration “Issues of collective communes” [Zagadnienia gmin zbiorowych] for the Polish Government in Exile by Walenty Fojkis. The arti- cle presents the author's person, construction of the study and individual reflections of the author, in which he focused on choosing the most favorable, from the point of view of his own experi- ence, system of basic local government unit. Contrary to the title of the study, he recommended not collective communes but individual communes supported by special purpose associations as the best foundation for Poland's future local government.

The study deals with the ideas of domestic and foreign Slovak resistance during the World War II on the form of the post-war Czechoslovak Republic regime. In addition to the opinion on the consistent state restoration of Czechoslovakia (1918—1938), there was also the idea of modifying the regime of Czechoslovakia (1918—1938) through its transformation, which under the influence of strengthening the importance of the Soviet Union in the war took the form of a people’s democratic establishment.

The present text aims to draw attention to the hitherto unanalysed matter of the evaluation of Michał Staszków’s scientific work, carried out by Kazimierz Kolańczyk, a scholar from Poznań specialising in Roman law. The evaluation of Michał Staszków’s efforts to obtain the title of associate professor, previously unanalysed and unpublished, is an interesting source of information as to the scientific perception of this Katowice-based scientist.

History of law is one of the disciplines of legal science. Studying the history of law (especially the Polish one) was significant during the partitions, because it emphasized national identity. At that time, in the19th century, the leading research centre was the University of Cra- cow. It was there that the first legal and historical subjects were taught, which is why the first di- dactic models were developed at these universities. In the 20th century, to meet the needs of that times, many attempts were made to change the education system. Especially memorable seems to be the reform of 1975, which was not approved by the academic community. After over 40 years, some universities in Poland are still following the assumptions of that model.

In the period from 1968 till 2018, the study of Roman law at the University of Silesia in Katowice was carried out, among others, by Michał Staszków and Edward Szymoszek. These two scholars were not only the first lecturers of this subject at the Faculty of Law and Adminis- tration in Katowice, but also during their academic careers, they contributed to the expansion of knowledge in this area of law.

In the field of Roman law, Michał Staszków researched Roman litigation process, and his most popular works on this subject are the articles Vindicta, Vindex and the monographic work “Vim dicere. Studies on the origins of the Roman litigation process” [Studia nad genezą procesu rzymskiego]. As for the second of the aforementioned scholars — Edward Szymoszek, we can state, on the basis of his works, that the object of his interest was the school of glossators and Roman litigation process, with the emphasis on the status of a judge.

During the fifty years of the Faculty of Law and Administration in Katowice, the two Ro- man law experts undoubtedly exerted influence on the development of Roman law. They were connected not only by the fact that they taught Roman law, but also by their interests. Later in his career, Edward Szymoszek made an insightful analysis of the works of Michał Staszków, and the work of his predecessor influenced the direction of his later research in the field of litigation.