Vol. 10 Issue 2 Year 2017

Volume 10 (2017)

Publication date: 31.10.2017

Description

Volume Editors: prof. dr hab. Dorota Malec, prof. dr hab. Wacław Uruszczak, dr Maciej Mikuła, mgr Jakub Pokoj

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Editorial team

Issue Editors Prof. dr hab. Dorota Malec, prof. dr hab. Wacław Uruszczak, dr Maciej Mikuła, Jakub Pokoj

Issue content

Chronicle of Legal Historical Events in Germany in 2016

Maria Filipiak

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 163 - 166

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Usucapio pro herede w „Instytucjach” Gaiusa

Kamil Sorka

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 213 - 240

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.011.7555

Roman legal sources that relate to usucapion as heir (usucapio pro herede) are not numerous. We find only a relevant fragment of the second commentary of the Gaius’ Institutiones and a short title Pro herede vel pro possessore in the 41st book of the Justinian’s Digesta. The paper focuses on the exegesis of the first of the sources. By the institution of usucapion as heir anybody who possessed any goods of an inheritance could acquire the inheritance within a year. Therefore, the main purpose of the institution seemed to be determining who was going to be responsible for continuing the domestic worship (sacra familiaria). When the sacra had lost their social significance, usucapio pro herede changed its object – the goods that belonged to an inheritance, not the inheritance as such. In classical Roman law, usucapion as heir started to be considered wicked and reprobate legal institution. The emperor Hadrian marginalized usucapio pro herede through a decree of the senate sponsored by him. The senatus consultum made usucapion reversible for the actual heir. Emperor Marcus Aurelius introduced a new crime – crimen expilatae hereditatis, which consisted in overtaking goods that belonged to a someone else’s inheritance. Yet, usucapio pro herede was never abolished by a legal act.

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Anarchistyczne wizje bezpaństwowego ładu społeczno-politycznego średniowiecznej Islandii – zarys krytyki

Włodzimierz Gołgoza

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 241 - 261

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.012.7556

Between the late 9th and the middle of the 13th century, Iceland was a pre-state society with a political system based on private means of creation, adjudication and enforcement of law. The functioning of this society has been a subject of numerous studies conducted within various disciplines, including legal history, political anthropology and institutional economics. In the last couple of decades, Medieval Iceland has also become a topic of interest to the various branches of the modern anarchist movement, whose members are prone to looking for historical examples of societies which lack a coercive government. The aim of this article is to critique the anarchist reconstructions of the Medieval Icelandic mode of governance. In particular, I will show that the anarchist visions of the non-state Icelandic socio-political order are anachronistic and substantially differ from the accounts found in the Old Icelandic narrative sources, as well as in the private collections of the medieval local law, known as Grágás.

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The Earliest Law Books of the City of Brno and Their Relation to the Contemporary Legal Practice

Naďa Fiedlerová, Lenka Šmídová Malárová

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 263 - 287

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.013.7557

The essay focuses on an analysis of the earliest law books of the city of Brno with an emphasis on their relationship to contemporary legal practice. Special attention will be paid to the earliest Brno law book (inv. No. 1) and the Law Book of the City of Brno from the middle of the fourteenth century (inv. No. 2), which, despite not having a normative character, were clearly used in legal practice. This use is proven by the textual tradition of the latter law book and its preservation in several redactions that inspired later legal monuments. The second part of the essay starts from an analysis of selected regulations of the Law Book of the City of Brno and their comparison with preserved legal instructions for the town of Uherské Hradiště, which in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period belonged to the circle of Brno municipal law. Then, on the basis of the aforementioned analysis, the relationship between contemporary practice and the texts of the given law books are evaluated. At the same time, the essay will point to the presence of the ius commune influences in the individual legal instructions.

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System emerytalny dla urzędników Wolnego Miasta Krakowa. Część I: lata 1815–1837

Mateusz Mataniak

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 289 - 318

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.014.7559

This article examines the evolving legal underpinning of the pension schemes for the officials of the Free City of Cracow. The first part of this study reconstructs the principles of awarding retirement pensions in 1815–1833. The pensions were financed from the public budget, following an endorsement by the Assembly of Deputies and the Governing Senate. Then the article reviews the debate in the Assembly over the Pension Bill and the circumstances in which the Pension Fund Act was adopted on 18 September 1833. A detailed examination of this Act considers its scope, i.e. the categories of persons entitled to a retirement pension (full-time and part-time office workers, their widows and children), conditions of eligibility, sources of the financing the pension fund (employers’ contributions, donations, subsidies from the state budget), and the level of pension payments. The article also retraces the processing of pension awards, overseen by the Pension Committee, a body established by the Senate to supervise the proper functioning of the pension scheme, and looks into the calculation methods employed by the Pension Fund. The article is based almost exclusively on original sources from the National Archives at Cracow, supplemented by materials published in the official gazettes (The Legal Gazette of the Free City of Cracow and the Government Daily).

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Traditions and prospects of remuneration of clergymen in Czechoslovakia in the period 1918–1950 and in the present Slovak Republic

Adriana Švecová, Viktor Križan

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 319 - 333

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.015.7560

Historical and legal examination of financial provision for the clergy from traditional and state-recognized churches and religious societies in Slovakia brings with it not only the historical dimension of its descriptive and analytical significance, but provides a specific social-security law and labour law basis for the current material status of the clergy, which is in many cases at an undignified and socially-deprived level due to current legislation. Substantive law, even after 28 years since the political regime change in November 1989, comes from the time of real socialism, and despite a number of cosmetic changes the several times amended Act from 1949 (!) has not escaped the framework of state supervision and paternalism, as well as social levelling of Churches, at least in the case of clerical remuneration. The aim of this study was to use short, recapitulating sketches to focus historical-legal attention on the employment basis of remuneration regulation for the clergy (i.e. its basis in the form of state support called “congruence”) in different constitutional phases of the Czechoslovak Republic in two diametrically-opposed political regimes: firstly the democratic 1st Czechoslovak Republic and then the post-war People’s Czechoslovak Republic, led and controlled by the Communists after their take-over in 1948. In conclusion, we analyse the current legal regulation of clerical remuneration in the Slovak Republic as one of the legal successors of the defunct Czechoslovak Federal Republic, and we describe the current major problems that we see as rooted in past legislation.

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O dziejach Wydziału Prawa UJ w dobie II RP

Stanisław Salmonowicz

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 335 - 347

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.017.7562

The article is a full-length review of Przemysław M. Żukowski’s monograph Wydział prawaThe article is a full-length review of Przemysław M. Żukowski’s monograph Wydział Prawa Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego w Krakowie w latach 1918–1939 [The Faculty of Law of Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1918–1939], Kraków 2017, Księgarnia Akademicka, 574 pp. The author based his research on an impressive range of sources. The thoroughness of the author’s approach is shown in both the structure and the contents of work, which is divided into five chapters. They are: 1) The Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University on the eve of Poland’s independence (pp. 35–70); 2) The basis of the functioning of the Faculty of Law 1918–1939 (pp. 71–136); 3) Professors, associate professors, assistants and administrative staff (pp. 137–248); 4) Chairs of the Faculty of Law (pp. 249–384); 5) Activity of the Faculty of Law in the academic, cultural, political and social life of the interwar decades (pp. 385–472). The article contains a handful of polemical remarks which, however, in no way diminish the reviewer’s high appreciation of the monograph.

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A New Image of the History of the European Constitutionalism. Some Remarks on the monograph entitled „Reconsidering Constitutional Formation I National Sovereignty. A Comparative Analysis of the Juridification by Constitution”, ed. By Ulrike Müßig, Springer Open, 2016

Andrzej Dziadzio

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 349 - 361

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.17.016.7561

The reviewed monograph deserves the attention of both legal historians and constitutionalists, since it deals with the forming of European constitutionalism on the three levels: doctrinal, historical and comparative. Sovereignty of the nation was a fundamental principle of European constitutionalism and parliamentarism. The presented description of the process of juridification of national sovereignty based on the Polish, Spanish, Belgian and Italian constitutional models, considerably broadened the research field to be exploited by those interested in the origins of the European constitutional experience, both that of permanent and ephemeral nature. This experience makes up a common tradition reflective of the European constitutional pattern which in the present-day Europe is referred to as the “state of law” (Rechtsstaat).

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Legal Historical Research in Belgium (2016)

Wouter Druwé

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 363 - 367

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Overview of Conferences Focusing on Legal History and Roman law, Organized in the Czech Republic in 2016

Lenka Šmídová Malárová

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 369 - 370

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Chronicle of Research in Legal and Constitutional History in France in 2016

Pierre-Olivier Rigaudeau

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 10, Issue 2, Volume 10 (2017), pp. 371 - 374