Maciej Mikuła

The monograph is an introduction to the history of the teaching of law in Trnava during the existence of the university (1667–1777, and subsequently since 1998) and during the functioning of the Royal Law School (1777–1784). Among the issues analyzed were the circumstances of the establishment of the Faculty of Law at the University of Trnava in 1667, curricula with particular emphasis on the study of Hungarian law, and the significance of the juridical works of the university’s professors. The work emphasized how Corpus Iuris Hungarici, a two-volume collection of Hungarian law (vol. 1 contains Tripartitum by Štefan Werbőczy), was developed and published in Trnava (1696), where advanced studies in the area of criminal law were also conducted.

The note presents the structure of the volume, including the method of summarizing documents in the form of a short abstract and a more extensive register –in English and Polish. Attention was also paid to the research value of sources concerning the Jewish self-government in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The volume provides valuable material for research in the field of the history of law, for example the legal grounds for judgments.

The reviewed book includes 182 medieval inventories of the chattels of Cracow burghers. It is doubtless a very valuable source for research in the area of the history of personal belongings. The objective of the short report is to show the value of such a source for legal-historical research. The book takes into consideration phenomena in the areas of inheritance and marriage law. But the main part of the review is the analysis of information found in the works of lawyers, which is especially worthwhile for research on the legal culture of medieval Polish towns.

An intensive development of Polish parliamentarism took place in the 15th century; the composition, procedures and competence scope of the General Sejm (Polish parliament) were being established, an example of which may be the principle that the Polish gentry was to be represented in Parliament by elected deputies – two from each land. Among the numerous regulations established at all kinds of conventions which took place in the early period of Polish parliamentarism, there were issues devoted to cities and town dwellers. Among them, one should mention, among others, regulations relating to trade and trade routes, those counteracting the high costs of life, changes relating to the principles of court proceedings, and taxes. Numerous regulations had to be reevaluated and reconsidered at successive parliamentary sessions, also in the 16th century, which testifies to the fact that due to the resistance of the townsfolk, the regulations passed by the sejm, had not been applied. Yet the overall evaluation of parliamentary legislation dating back to the early period of Polish parliamentarism, does not allow one to conclude that this legislation was unequivocally anti-urban. Numerous laws and regulations which had been passed in the interest of the gentry were also favorable to the townsmen.

The reviewed book is an extensive study devoted to criminal trial as conducted in the towns of Southern Poland of early modern period. The author relied on particularly rich source material composed of norm-setting acts, writings of lawyers engaged in theoretical analysis and a large number of court books referring to penal cases, both those presented in the form of manuscripts as well as those that appeared in print. The significance of the study consists in the exploitation by its author of the sources illustrative of legal practice. The author investigated, with a particular precision, the factual course that the municipal criminal trial used to take in more serious penal cases. He laid a particular emphasis on the fairly well source-supported evidentiary proceedings. Worthy of note is his analysis devoted to the substantial law basis according to which the judgements were passed. The analysis showed that in the 16th through 18th centuries, in the municipal courts the local customary law played significant role, apart from that played by the Saxon and Magdeburg legal systems. On the basis of the research that he made the author suggests a conclusion that, despite the differences detectable in the practice of the respective towns, there functioned a uniform municipal penal procedure. The latter was characterized by certain features. These were: 1) the absence – in general – of individualized inquiry that would precede the judicial part of proceedings; 2) the instituting and conducting the judicial proceedings through ex officio method being regarded as something absolutely exceptional; 3) the proceedings were – as a rule – instituted due to the proposal of the plaintiff although sometimes they were instituted through the handing one of the accused to the court; 4) the varying role of the parties engaged in the trial, this being dependant on the specific court; 5) a significant role played by the defence counsels; 6) the lack of limitations that might be imposed on evidentiary proceedings with respect to the specific stage of the trial; 7) the evaluation of evidence based on common sense and not on rigid rules; 8) a slight significance of the appeal proceedings, this might be due to the influence of inquisitional type of procedure. While highly appreciating the practice of criminal courts, the author arrived at a conclusion that remarkably large number of elements of accusatorial and adversary nature that are found in the discussed proceedings locates the criminal trial conducted in the Polish towns of the modern era on the position of the accusatorial and adversary model, the modern elements of inquisitional origin being also detectable in it.
 

While exercising the state power, the Jagiellons instrumentally exploited the privileges granted to social groups or individuals. The privileges created a new legal state different from that secured by the Polish ius commune. The beneficiaries of the privileges were not only the royal and private towns but also the specific individuals. The latter were frequently the nobles or clergy as well as ecclesiastical institutions. In the towns the liberty-introducing privileges, issued for the possessors of landplots in the town, were detrimental not only to the royal but also to the municipal treasury. In addition these privileges were frequently bound with the court exemption. This meant that the dispute referring to the piece of land was subject to the competence of nobiliary or ecclesiastical courts. From the 15th century on, the royal towns used to obtain the assurance of the King who promised that he would refrain from issuing tax liberties for the benefit of individuals. But since the king excercised the power of issuing leges speciales he was not bound by promises he made. The policy pursued by the Jagiellons vis-a-vis the towns was the resultant of the policy that the kings pursued at home. This policy required efforts designed to construe and maintain political groupings. The royal towns, as a part of royal demesne, were the assets which were expected not so much to bring a pure income to the treasury but were instrumentally exploited for the governing of the country. They were considered to be the tool suitable for rewarding the loyal individuals. The issuing of tax exemption was therefore one of the instruments facilitating the government business. This instrument was obviously of smaller potence then ius distributiva, pledging royal demense, headships of villages as well as legacies on salt mines and customs. Nevertheless, this was the instrument worth noting. It was something what was not ignored either by chancellors or castellans.

The book presented is a critical source edition of the three oldest accounts of the city of Przemyśl (manuscripts of the State Archives in Przemyśl, Shelfmarks 297, 298, and 299). The short description of the edition focuses on the use of these types of sources in research in the field of legal history, and emphasizes the richness of the critical apparatus developed by publishers.

The testamentary disposition was subjected to the regulation in the Lithuanian Statutes (of 1529, 1566, 1588) which were tantamount to the codification of law in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the First Statute (of 1529) the regulation was not much extended but in the next Statutes it developed. When compared with the First Statute, the regulations found in the Statutes that followed were responsible not only for the increase in questions that were subjected to regulations but also for the deep modification of the subject‐of‐law scope of testamentary succession. This was due to the general tendency detectable in the evolving Lithuanian law. The tendency consisted in the facilitating of the conclusions of inter vivos legal transactions referring to the real property. This had positive effects on economic development. At the same time the control of the monarch over the alienation of real property was dropped (1566). On the other hand there was imposed the ban on the testamentary dispositions referring to the real property. This inter alia was designed to protect the family property against the legacies made for the benefit of Church institutions. As a result, the Lithuanian testament, which preciously followed the German pattern and was a collection of legacies, became, upon the Second Lithuanian Statute, the instrument designed to dispose exclusively of the movables.

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”.