The Decisiones Lituanicae of Piotr Rojzjusz –an Example of the Renaissance Source of Knowledge Concerning the Application of Roman law Before the Court of Assessors in Vilnius. Problems in Research and Translation

The objective of the paper is to present the current state of research on the silhouette and activity of Pedro Ruiz de Moros (Roysius), as well as on his work Decisiones Lituanicae, and put forward research postulates. The author presented in particular the results of research conducted by Tomasz Fijałkowski and Andrzej Kremer, and proposed directions in which these studies should be supplemented. One of the postulates is to take a closer look at Roysius as a Renaissance expert in Roman law. Another postulate is to conduct in-depth research into elements of Roman law in Decisiones, and then determine the influence of this work on judicial practice. Another area of research is the activity of Roysius in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in particular his role in the work on the Second Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the development of the Statutes of the Samogitian chapter. Next, the postulate of publishing Decisiones’ translation into Polish was presented, and difficulties and doubts related to the translation were indicated.

Constitutions of Selected European Free Cities 1806–1954. Source Texts

Recently, two monographs have been published that are directly related to the research topic. The purpose of their writing was to supplement the existing Polish and European literature concerning the political history and organization of those European Free Cities which significantly influenced the development of the political and socio-economic relations of the continent over 150 years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Closer attention to the above-mentioned subject has become urgent, especially due to the lack of relevant studies in European literature, which has been examined only fragmentarily. The emergence of free cities, sometimes also referred to as “countries”in Europe, was, of course, with the exception of Germany, mainly the effect of inter-empire or inter-state cooperation in order to prevent political and national conflicts by establishing a new European order to prevent such conflicts in the future (such as at the Vienna Congress, and Versailles and Potsdam). As it turned out, the adopted decisions were temporary, and their durations lasted from several to several dozen years. Each of them promulgated their own constitution at that time, the texts of which will be published in a separate publication.

Court Case Files and Court Judgments from the Second Republic of Poland as a Historical Source: Key Archival and Methodological Issues in an Example of Research on Family fideicommissa

The article is the result of archival research, executed under the leadership of Prof. Zbigniew Naworski within the framework of an academic project financed by the National Science Centre (the OPUS 14 program). The author tries to show basic rules and problems associated with research on civil court case files in Polish archives from the interwar period. The starting points for his considerations are the history of Polish archival law on the criteria for the assessment of the archival value of court files, and the consequences of adopting them into practice. Besides that, he tries to emphasize how essential the archival finding aids are for this type of research, as well as how their absence is a key issue to the effectiveness of archival research. Those are crucial factors, especially when a legal historian needs to work on numerous, diffused, and not always organized archival collections. Unfortunately, this is an issue with interwar court case files. The author suggests how the archival staff might improve the shaping of the archival inventories on court case files, to make them more accessible and easier to work with. He also tries to demonstrate the advantages of creating other archival aids on this type of source material –especially archival descriptive inventories and indexes which are very helpful for preliminary research. In the end, the author shares his experiences of his attempts to reconstruct or regain lost court case files using other archival collections of sources of interwar family archives or barristers files.

*Artykuł został przygotowany w toku realizacji projektu badawczego finansowanego przez Narodowe Centrum Nauki w programie OPUS 14 (nr 2017/27/B/HS5/02679) zatytułowanego Fideikomisy familijne w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej w świetle orzecznictwa sądów cywilnych. Dzieje funkcjonowania feudalnej instytucji prawnej w obrocie prawnym państwa nowoczesnego. Tekst ma charakter historycznoprawny, wykorzystuje jednak i silnie nawiązuje do terminologii i metod badawczych archiwistyki. W konsekwencji w dalszym toku wywodu będęużywałw skrótowej formie standardowych skrótów używanych w nauce i praktyce archiwalnej.

The study of post-war crime is becoming more and more popular among Polish researchers. The basic source for conducting this kind of research is criminal files, primarily those of the regional courts operating in the years 1945–1950. The author calls attention to both statutory and actual restrictions on access to source materials. He also notes how using other, non-official sources or witness accounts in this type of research will not always be appropriate. He postulates that research on post-war crime in Poland should be designed primarily as research on crime in the juridical sense. The author also indicates that research on post-war crime has many points in common with the so-called historical criminology.

The Penalization of the Participants of the March 1968 Events by Criminal-Administrative Colleges

In March 1968, in the streets of Warsaw, Polish students protested against the communist authorities’ restriction of freedom of cultural and artistic activity. Demonstrations taking place during the so-called March events were brutally pacified by the militia, and participants in the events were charged with breach of the peace. When considering cases of their offenses, the penal-administrative colleges imposed severe basic arrest penalties and high fines, which were usually immediately convertible into alternative arrest. The penalties isolating the offender from society were imposed in an accelerated procedure without any guarantee of defence of the rights of the accused. This practice of the colleges’ severe punishment of participants in social protests, which was initiated during the March events of 1968, would be repeated during successive political crises of the 1970s and 1980s.

On the Need to Supplement the “Akta zjazdów stanów Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego”: The Edition of Documents Concerning the Lithuanian Convocation

The article is the edition of two sources supplementing the publication series “Akta zjazdów stanów Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego” [Records of Conventions of the Estates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania] edited by Henryk Lulewicz. Both documents refer to the Lithuanian Convocation of 1615. One of them is “Punkta postanowiene na Convocatiey” [Resolutions Adopted at the Convocation] (Vilnius, 5 VI 1615), prepared for the deputies who were to present the resolutions of the general convocation to Sigismund III Vasa. The other one is the king’s response to the resolutions and the above-mentioned decisions of the Lithuanian Convocation. In the introduction to the published materials I stress the significance of the ruler’s response to the resolutions of the estates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With few exceptions, the approval of the monarch was necessary to make tax resolutions and legal standards valid law. Therefore, the final process of the legislative procedure of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania needs to be taken into consideration in the context of historical and legal research.

* Edycja źródłowa powstała w ramach projektu badawczego Narodowego Centrum Nauki SONATA, nr 2016/23/D/HS3/03210 pt. „Rewolucja militarna jako czynnik modernizacyjny skarbowości i organizacji państwa polsko-litewskiego na tle europejskim”.

Concerning Methods for the Use of Sources in the Work of a Legal Historian and Critical Editions of Those Sources, on the 90th Birthday of Prof. Stanisław Grodziski. The “Sources connect us” Academic Conference (Kraków, September 19, 2019)

On the 19th of September 2019, the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University organised an academic conference entitled “Łącząnas źródła”[“Sources connect us”]. The symposium was combined with the celebrations of the 90th birthday of Prof. Stanisław Grodziski, an outstanding legal historian, author of around 500 publications, and former Dean of the Faculty (1978–1981) and Vice-Rector of the University (1987–1990), who also has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wrocław. One of the significant areas of Prof. Grodziski’s academic activity is in the editing of legal history sources. The subject of the conference was therefore a great occasion to focus on Prof. Grodziski’s achievements in this field of study. In the jubilee part of the conference, presided over by Vice-Rector for University Development, Prof. Dorota Malec, speeches were given by Prof. Wojciech Nowak, Rector of the Jagiellonian University, and by Prof. Jerzy Pisuliński, Dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration. The laudation for Prof. Grodziski was delivered by Prof. Wacław Uruszczak. The subsequent part of the conference consisted of 15 papers, divided into three sessions, presented by scholars affiliated with various academic centres. The presentations concerned current or planned editing works regarding legal history sources. Moreover, various methods of applying these sources to academic research and educational activities at the university, as well as to judicial decisions, were discussed. To conclude the conference, Dr. Hab. Maciej Mikuła presented the basic assumptions of the novel project concerning the electronic meta-edition of legal history sources “IURA. Sources of Laws from the Past”.

Symposium „I take You to be my wife / husband...? What do nupturients mean today?”, Krakow, 15th November 2018

The symposium „I take You to be my wife / husband...? What do the nupturients mean today?”was held on November 15, 2018. It was organized by the Faculty of Canon Law of the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków. The main topic of the conference was the meaning of matrimonial consent. During two sessions there were five lectures delivered. The lectures in the first session concerned the faith of the nupturients as the element of matrimonial consent, verifying it nupturients do not exclude indissolubility of marriage, and the question as to whether a marriage motivated by pregnancy always incurs manifest nullity within the meaning of the Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio of Supreme Pontiff Francis Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus. The last two lectures discussed marriages contracted for other than specifically religious reasons (e.g. economical), and pre-nuptial agreements –especially their influence on the validity of matrimonial consent.