Andrzej Dziadzio

The university career of Józef Reinhold had not been particularly long, as it lasted merely ten years (1918–1928). Due to his premature death at the age of 44, he occupies a rather peripheral place among the luminaries of Polish penal law, remaining in the shadow of such famous professors as: Edmund Krzymuski, Juliusz Makarewicz or Józef Rosenblatt. Yet the academic achievements of Józef Reinhold, and particularly his paper entitled Preventive Measures Against Criminal Offenders published in 1913, puts him among the ranks of the precursors of a sociological approach to the Polish penal law in the 20th century. He was also the first propagator of criminal policy on Polish territories which he regarded as a separate discipline of law. Thanks to the academic research conducted by Józef Reinhold, the sociological approach to criminal law had been more widely recognized on Polish territories which found its most tangible reflection in chapter XII (“Preventive measures”) of the Polish Penal Code of 1932. However, the merits of Józef Reinhold in propagating the principles of the sociological approach to criminal law had been overshadowed by the academic achievement of Julisz Makarewicz, the author of the Polish penal code. A considerable part of Józef Reinhold’s professional career was associated with the Krakow jurisdiction (1910–1921). Contrary to his colleagues, fellow professors and masters, Józef Reinhold was not “a boisterous character and was always characterized by moderation”. This trait of his character may be one of the reasons why in the history of the Polish science of law and in the history of Polish Jews, professor Reinhold did not find a deserving place which was definitely due to him, taking into consideration his original and creative academic output, and the attitude of a “good, talented Jew as well as a staunch defender” of Judaism.

The article describes the consultative activities of the Professors and Doctors of the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University in the years 1817–1833. On the basis of Article 15 of the 1815 Constitution of the Free City of Krakow, they examined whether it was admissible for the parties to the court proceedings to lodge a third instance appeals against the consistent decisions issued by both of the first instance court and the court of appeal. This was deemed to be possible if the judgements were found in violation of substantive civil law or important forms of court proceedings. I briefly describe the form of proceedings by the Faculty of Law, including the appointment of case clerks, the convening of meetings, and the procedure for passing resolutions. Based on extensive archival materials, stored in the Jagiellonian University Archives and the National Archive in Krakow, I reconstruct three such proceedings. They concerned provisions on the form of legal acts for evidence purposes (Article 1341 KN) and contracts with a private signature (Article 1325 KN), as well as a provision on matrimonial property relationships (Article 1443 KN). In the first case, the opinion of the Faculty of Law determined a correct line of jurisprudence, while in the second, its interpretation of the provision narrowed the code dimension of contract freedom and constrained the principle of pacta sunt servanda. The last opinion is an example of an incorrect interpretation of the Napoleonic Code.

The Academic Portrait of the Creator of the Pure Theory of Law was written by Thomas Olechowski, a professor of the University of Vienna, and a historian of law with an established academic position, having outstanding expertise in the field of the history of the system of law in Austria in the 19th and 20th centuries. Olechowski collected impressive source material - mainly archival, including Kelsen’s extensive correspondence, university and administrative files connected with all the stages of his life and academic activity, and interviews with still-living persons (oral history) who had met Kelsen directly or indirectly. Owing to the obtained material, often secured through detailed source query in Austrian, Czech, German, and American archives, the author managed to correct and complete many details from his subject’s life and works. Hence, the reviewed biography of Kelsen provides a great deal of new information, which presents a view of his life and academic achievements through a multithreaded method. Various examples of little-known or completely unknown facts from H. Kelsen’s biography will be presented in the review.

The Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw may be regarded as the model implementation of the Napoleonic constitutional ideas. The Constitution contained the quintessence of Bonapartism: personal rule of the monarch based upon the professional centralized bureaucracy, accompanied by parliament whose role was more decorative than real. Although such system was alien to Polish parliamentary tradition the Poles surprisingly easily adapted themselves to it. Many factors were at work to reach that goal: longing for independent state, the desire to do away with the harsh Prussian regime and the hopes of full restoring of independence. What was of utmost significance was the fact that state apparatus became the fully national structure. The Duchy of Warsaw was acknowledged as the constitutional continuation of old-time Poland.

The Napoleonic civil law legislation, as introduced in the Duchy of Warsaw, was anti-feudal in its content. Hence, it sometimes did not fit the socio-economic circumstances prevalent on the Polish soil. Yet, despite the fact that the Code Civil had no stronger links with the Polish legal tradition and contained the provisions which were excessively revolutionary from the point of view of conservative attitudes of landed gentry, it soon ceased to give rise to negative emotions. This was so because its liberal and egalitarian assumptions in fact corresponded the freedom-promoting ethos of Polish nobility. The ardent supporters of the Code were not only detectable among the governing elites but, one might say, the entire society promptly adapted themselves to its provisions. However these norms of the Code Civil which dramatically departed from Polish mentality, like e.g. lay matrimonial law, remained a dead letter. The Napoleonic legislation did not, therefore, thoroughly transformed the social relationships on the Polish soil but it undoubtedly had an impact on the democratization of Polish society and modernization of state structures, particularly the administration and the judiciary.