Piotr Michalik

In this article, the author presents in the form of a case study the causes, course, and effects of developing his didactic workshop of exercises in the general legal history in the context of the contemporary achievements of academic didactics. The main axis of the evolution of the author’s workshop, which took place in the era of the IT revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic, was the gradual transition from the use of methods appropriate for the teacher-centered learning (TCL), to methods aimed at studentcentered learning (SCL). The aim of the article is to contribute to the revival of the exchange of views and experiences by the academic teaching the history of law and other legal subjects, also in order to stimulate mutual evaluation of classes in the form of kind, but also critical peer feedback.

In the scientific study of religion the concept of ecstasy is connected to many phenomena, among them Shaman initiation journeys, ritual intoxication, the state of possession, as well as erotic and aesthetic rapture. All of these are present in the ritual practice and beliefs of the Indian school Yoginīkaula, developing in the sphere of the tantric Shaktist-Shaivist (śaktāśajva) currents. The core of the ritual-mythical system of the Kaulas was the cult of the yogini –threatening goddesses bestowing disciples with knowledge and power.

This paper discusses beliefs associated with human spiritual elements (often called “souls”) held by the indigenous Nahua from Sierra Zongolica, Mexico. Spiritual elements, such as tonalli, nawalli, and yolotl form part of a complex of correlated and often overlapping concepts. Such semantic intricacy related to the notion of a spiritual element is not just a local peculiarity of Sierra Zongolica. It appears in ethnographic data concerning other Nahuatl speaking areas, as well as in early colonial sources. Th erefore, the case of Nahua beliefs constitutes a challenge to monosemantic, unambiguous defi nitions of Mesoamerican indigenous concepts of human spiritual elements, as presented by many anthropologists and ethnohistorians.

The aim of this paper is to present the in-depth study of the only one piece of the adjudication activity of the judiciary in the Free City of Cracow (1815–1846) – the Sawiczewscy case. Named after its subject, the division of the estate of well-known Cracow’s pharmacist and university professor Józef Sawiczewski, the case is the example of rich source of material for the researcher in the field of the application of the French law of succession in the Republic of Cracow. In its first part the article describes the case proceedings including written pleadings lodged by the parties, rulings of the Cracow’s courts: the Tribunal of First Instance, the Court of Appeal, the Court of Third Instance and also the opinion of the Professors and Doctors of the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University. Due to that detailed analysis, the process of the interpretation of the Code civil regulations by the Cracow’s lawyers can be fully understood and properly evaluated. The comparative base for that evaluation is presented in the second part of the paper, which outlined the nineteenth century French interpretation of institutions of the law of succession applied in the case, i.e. the restitutions (rapports) and the disposable proportion (quotité disponible). As regards this base the outcomes are unsatisfactory since the members of the judiciary of the Free City of Kraków failed to meet not only the original intent but also the contemporary French understanding of the law of succession of the Code civil.

In the first decades of the 20th century, broad recognition of Francis Galton’s eugenics resulted in the implementation of its demands in the form of eugenic legislation. Particularly drastic form of the latter were sterilization laws, first introduced in the US State of Indiana in 1907, and later in most of the other states, and during the interwar period, several European countries. Between 1934 and 1936 under the influence of the Western “achievements”, especially the German law of 1933, the failed attempts to introduce compulsory sterilization were also undertaken in the Second Polish Republic. When analyzing the regulations proposed by Leo Wernic, the president of the Polish Eugenic Society, it would be advisable to bring in the sterilization laws adopted and applied on a large scale in the United States of America. In the “homeland” of eugenics legislation, the model sterilization law had been already prepared in 1914, and the Supreme Court of the United States upheld its constitutionality in the notorious Buck v. Bell case in 1927.