The Issue of the Office of Justice of the Peace in the Work of the Sejm of the Second Polish Republic in Light of Parliamentary Bills and Interpellations

The justices of the peace were one of the forms of society’s participation in the judiciary in the Second Polish Republic. This institution was inherited from the former partitioning states and did not exist throughout the country. Justices of the peace were provided for by the Act’s provisions amending the Law on the System of Ordinary Courts, but its requirements have been never implemented. Justices of the peace ended their activity in 1929, but their formal liquidation only occurred in 1938. In interwar Poland justices of the peace were not a form of public participation in the judiciary. They were in fact judges with significantly lower substantive competencies than professional judges.

Contrary to the provisions of the Constitution of 1921, justices of the peace were not elected by popular vote. The article deals with the extensive debates that took place in the Sejm regarding the selection of justices of the peace, and their role in the judiciary of the Second Republic of Poland, especially in its first period (1919–1928), when it was a problem of great interest to parliamentarians. This is evidenced by the numerous interpellations and parliamentary bills that the parliamentarians submitted, which the author analyses and quotes. On this basis, he concludes that the institution of justice of the peace was not supported by deputies, especially from among the agrarian and socialist parties. Often, justices of the peace were (in interpellations) accused of corruption, nepotism, and incompetence. The solution to this problem was seen in the full admission of society to participate in the judiciary, e.g. in the forms of justices of the peace, jury courts and lay judges.

Transformations in the Construction of the State’s Compensatory Liability in Poland in the 20^th Century. From the Basic Law of 1921 to the Constitution of 1997

The March Constitution was one of the first in Europe to introduce an innovative regulation of the institution of state liability for damages. The provision of Article 121 of the Constitution raised this legal institution to the rank of a constitutional principle. However, the constitutionalization of the citizens’ right to compensation for damages resulting from unauthorized or otherwise deleterious activity on the part of the authorities turned out to be insufficient. Despite sufficient grounds for the compensatory liability of state authorities in case of their unlawful actions or failed duties of service, the prevailing view in doctrine and jurisprudence was that Article 121 of the Constitution was only a programmatic norm. Even if in practice it became only a “dead letter of the law”, it played a key role in shaping the institution of the state’s liability for damages in Polish law in the 20th century.

The Impact of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of March 17, 1921 on the Formation of Local Governments in the Second Polish Republic

This article was written in connection with the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 17 March 1921 (the March Constitution). First, it presents the systemic assumptions of the Constitution, relating to local government, and then shows its impact on the formation of local governments in the Second Polish Republic. It describes the challenges and difficulties that accompanied attempts to pass local government laws in line with the spirit of the March Constitution. It presents an outline is given of the legal bases for the organisation of local governments in Poland and their activities during the entire interwar period (1918–1939). It also draws attention to changes in approach that those in power took towards the role of local government which followed the May coup in 1926 and were introduced in the Act of 23 March 1933 on the partial change of the local government system, and in the Constitution of 23 April 1935 (the April Constitution).

The Case of the Dissolution of the Kraków City Council in 1924

This study was devoted to the investigation of the case of the dissolution of the Kraków City Council in 1924 and the consequences resulting from this decision. After the death of the President of Kraków, Jan Kanty Federowicz, the supervisory authority (i.e. the voivode) decided to dissolve the City Council and appoint a government commissioner and a supervisory board. The commissioner was associated with the central government, while the members of the board mostly represented the ruling coalition. The councilors objected to this decision and appealed it to the Supreme Administrative Tribunal, which ultimately agreed with them. It was found that the voivode had issued the decision for dissolution in breach of the law. The controversial judgment was commented on by lawyers and criticized by those who contended that the Tribunal had errouneously based its decision rely on archaic legislation.

Disciplinary Responsibility over Judges in the Second Republic of Poland. Substantive Law Issues in Light of Judges’ Personal and Disciplinary Files from the Former Prussian Territories

The issue of disciplinary responsibility over judges is one of the key aspects of the functioning of the judiciary. This mechanism must remain a compromise between respecting a special status for judges based on their independence and their key role in the functioning of the state, versus the need to eliminate negative behaviors on their part. Such oversight in turn should lead to the building up of societal trust in the judiciary. The article is an attempt to present the issue of disciplinary proceedings against judges in the Second Polish Republic in the areas of the former Prussian territories.

By presenting this issue from the perspective of substantive law, this article complements research already carried out in this area, the issue of the course of procedure in disciplinary proceedings having already been presented in a separate text. In this article, the author focuses on the issues regarding judge’s disciplinary misconduct and actual disciplinary punishments. The legal provisions were compared with the practice of their application, reconstructed on the basis of preserved archival files of judges, both personal and disciplinary.

Acts with the Force of Statute – Models, Theory, and Practice in the Polish Parliamentary-Cabinet System in the Years 1921–1926 and after 1989

The centenary of the enactment of the March Constitution in Poland prompts questions about the constituent parts of the achievements of Polish constitutionalism of that period. The authors have found the issue of the sources of law worthy of attention, and among the latter, especially those acts that are situated between the classically conceived competences of the authorities, i.e., acts with the force of statute issued by the organs of executive authority. These acts, formally absent from the system of sources of law of the March Constitution until the enactment of the August amendment of 1926, appeared in the practice of the Second Republic at the time of the budgetary crisis in 1924, in the form of acts issued “by the President of the Republic on the basis of resolutions of the Council of Ministers”. These “special kinds of autonomous regulations” [Z. Cybichowski] provoked intensive discussions regarding both the admissibility of such delegation of legislative power, as well as the legal essence and constitutionality of aforementioned regulations. The authors would like to take a closer look at the institution of legal acts with the force of statutes as sources functioning in the era of democratic constitutional solutions establishing a parliamentary-cabinet system [i.e., in the years 1921–1926 and after 1989], without neglecting the historical and comparative context in which the examined institution evolved.

* Niniejsze opracowanie pozostaje w części wynikiem badań przeprowadzonych w ramach realizacji grantu „Law-making delegation in representative democracy” Narodowego Centrum Nauki, w konkursie Opus 11, umowa nr 2016/21/B/HS5/00197.

In Need of New Questions… and Greater Diligence. Apropos Piotr Pilarczyk’s Monograph on the Judiciary of the Lithuanian Treasury Commission

Contemporary Polish legal historians’ writings rarely concern the political system of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, and even less often any substantial or procedural law thereof. Matters relating to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are becoming less and less popular in Polish academia as well. Actually, such a phenomenon is quite understandable, when one takes into account the expanding scholarly activities among Lithuanian and Belorussian researchers, and the archives abundant in source materials in these countries. Having that in mind, anyone interested should pay particular attention to Dr. Piotr Miłosz Pilarczyk’s monograph that deals with the topic of the Lithuanian Treasury Commission in the years 1765–1794.

The strongest point of the above-mentioned book is undeniably the fact, that the author conducted extensive archival enquiry and based his work on collected primary source materials – mainly records of the judiciary activities of the Commission. Unfortunately, the author’s failure to include materials from other sources (for instance correspondence) resulted in an unsatisfactory presentation of the social background of the activity of the Commission’s court, and, consequently, the motives behind its decisions are not always discernible. Although Pilarczyk correctly describes investigated data, he nevertheless rarely enriches his analysis with his own questions. The reviewed monograph contains numerous examples of judiciary praxis, which varied from the model as regulated in the Third Lithuanian Statute (1588). Regrettably, despite the homogeneous character of sources cited in the study, no quantitative methods were applied, which would presumably have resulted in a more detailed image of new trends in the praxis of administration of justice, including possible new or unconventional grounds (motives) behind court decisions. Although Pilarczyk’s work does provide many meaningful findings, he could have produced more interesting results.

Hopefully, scholars will further analyse the collected source materials in the future, with an objective of presenting either a quantitative or prosopographic study that could broaden the body of knowledge concerning the judiciary in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 18th century.

A Project of Changes to Civil Procedure in the Works of the Civil Reform Committee (1814–1815). A Source Edition – Part 2 (Enforcement Proceedings)

The present source publication is the sixth in a series encompassing the most important documents related to preparations for the replacement of French codes with national codification drafted by the Civil Reform Committee which worked between 1814 and 1815. The publication includes the second part of “The project of the civil judicial procedure in first instance”, which is comprised of enforcement proceedings presented just like the first part (the trial) by Franciszek Grabowski, and the fragments of the minutes reporting the course of the discussion concerning the solutions proposed within the project.

* Niniejsza publikacja została przygotowana w ramach projektu „Kodyfikacja narodowa – fantazmat czy realna alternatywa? W kręgu debat nad rodzimym systemem prawa sądowego w konstytucyjnym Królestwie Polskim” finansowanego ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki na podstawie umowy nr UMO-2015/18/E/ HS5/00762.

“Legal Heritage: Scholarly Meetings.” Report on Scholarly Meetings in the Academic Year 2020/2021

In the academic year 2020/2021 the Jagiellonian University Faculty of Law and Administration initiated a series of scholarly meetings devoted to legal heritage. Nine meetings were held, during which eight papers were presented. They were prepared by the following researchers: Dr. Jakob Maziarz (Department of the History of Polish Law of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University) on “The freedom of scientific research, the freedom to use cultural goods and access to archival materials”; Dr. Bohdan Widła (Department of Intellectual Property Law of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University) on “Protection of scientific or critical editions and first editions”; Dr. Jan Halberda (Department of the General History of the State and Law of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University) on “Estoppel in Anglo-American private law. The Rise of High Trees (1947) as the ‘Precedent’.”; Dr. Mateusz Mataniak (Laboratory of Source Publishing of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University) on “Archival materials for history of the Government of Galicia (1854–1914) from the resource of Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv. Contribution to research on Polish legal heritage.” Jan Bazyli Klakla (PhD student at the Department of Sociology of Law of the Faculty of Law and Administration and the Institute of Sociology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University) on “Is customary law like an onion? A multi-layered approach to customary law and its status in the modern world”; Dr. Hab. Katarzyna Krzysztofek-Strzała (Department of History of Administration and Religious Law, Laboratory of Religious Law and Law on Religious Denominations of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University) on “Between the letter of the law and the law in action. Office for Religious Affairs practice towards churches and religious associations”; Dr. Anna Ceglarska (Department of the History of Political and Legal Doctrines of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University) on “The concept of the ‘rule of law’ in presocratic Greece”; Prof. Piotr Górecki (University of California, Riverside Department of History) on “The course of events in Polish and German law court trials in medieval Poland. A comparative sketch”.