Jakob Maziarz

Jury courts existed in all the partitioning countries, and after 1918 they were to operate in all parts of the reborn Polish state. Their activities were suspended indefinitely in the former Prussian and Russian partitions. Only the former Austrian partition operated until 1938, when the Sanacja authorities liquidated them. Jury courts adjudicated only criminal cases –concerning the most severe crimes and political crimes. Recently, more attention has been devoted to jury courts and the participation of the social factor in the judiciary in Polish science, but so far, no publications in English have appeared on this subject. In the article, the author presents a short description of the jury’s activity in Poland and discusses three hypotheses about the activity of the jury in Polish science.

FUNDING

The project ‘Continuity and Discontinuity of Pre-war Legal Systems in Post-war Successor States (1918–1939)’ is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe. Visegrad Grant No. 22030159.

The article concerns penal – administrative procedure used by administrative organs in the Second Republic of Poland, from which derives the current transgression procedure. Before the unification in 1928 there were four legal systems regulating transgression procedures. In the 1918–1928 period additional complications of legal system emerged because of lack of consistency in penal – administrative legislation. The article presents sources of law on transgression procedure before and after 1928, outlines the course of administrative procedure in penal cases and describes the possibilities of judicial control over administrative jurisdiction of both common and administrative courts. The article presents also the problems connected with interpretation of penal – administrative regulations in the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction.

The work consists of two parts. One of them is the first Polish translation of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic of April 11, 1933, and the other is an article devoted to this constitution and the system of government prevailing in Portugal during its period of validity. The Constitution of 1933 had never previously been translated into Polish, although its translation (often anonymous) was published in several other languages, including English, French, German, and Russian. While the circumstances of adopting the constitution of 1933, its sources, and its ideological concepts are reasonably well chronicled in Polish literature, the Estado Novo system is less so, and the author devotes his article to analysing this new regime. It is a synthesis of the constitution’s provisions, against the background of the circumstances in which it was adopted and the ideology on which it was based: corporatism, conservatism, moderate nationalism, and meritocracy. The author also does not ignore the unique role of the architect and originator of the Portuguese system of that time –António de Oliveira Salazar –and his views on the state system.

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.