The article presents the image of an attorney as characterized in Old Polish literature from the 16th and 17th centuries. It reflected, to some extent, the attitude of the people of the time (primarily the nobility) towards the legal profession. There is no doubt that the perception of attorneys by Old Polish society was unequivocally negative. They were portrayed as greedy, dishonest men, liars with no respect for the law and even instigators of non-compliance with the law. Literary works and political writings broadly condemned such behaviors. However, this stereotype applied only to professional attorneys-at-law. By no means were non-professional agents (attorneys in fact) attacked, nor was the institution of the power of attorney itself criticized. It seems that this sort of critical attitude was not estate-based (many attorneys were noblemen), although it is possible that the low descent of lawyers influenced the virulence of the criticism. The paper attempts to answer the question as to what extent the literary image of an attorney corresponded to reality. It seems that the works comprised objective reflections on the legal profession and the emotional attitudes of individuals (including the authors themselves) or social groups. It is noteworthy that these pieces of literature often regarded the entire Polish legal system of the time as dysfunctional. Nevertheless, the recurrence of motifs such as greediness or dishonesty gives reason to believe that at least some of these allegations were not unfounded. At the same time, it should be noted that this image of a lawyer corresponded with the stereotype present in European and non-European culture from antiquity to contemporary times.

The subject of the analysis concerns one of the administrative-legal aspects related to military requisitions in the period of the Duchy of Warsaw, namely, the claims of the population resulting from unsatisfied dues for war requisitions and material losses in households which occurred as a result of military operations conducted on Polish soil in the early 19th century. In light of the regulations adopted by the authorities of the Duchy of Warsaw, these claims were to be settled in the manner indicated, while future public burdens were to be settled on the basis of the principle of equity in the form of co-equation, i.e. the equalization of duties for the benefit of the army. The Central Liquidation Commission – the state body appointed to carry out the liquidation of claims – was established in 1808. Its main duty was to carry out activities such as the receipt, consideration and determination of claims against the State Treasury.

The article focuses on the problem of using legal heritage based on the example of the Constitution of 3 May 1791. This issue is considered in relation to two selected moments in the history of the Congress Kingdom of Poland – 1814/1815 and 1831. What connects them and, at the same time, makes them unique periods in the political and constitutional history of Polish territories under the partitions is the relative freedom the Polish elites had in their right to decide on the constitutional foundations of their own statehood. In 1814/1815, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski was granted the emperor’s consent to prepare a draft which, after corrections, became the basis of the Constitutional Act granted by Alexander I on November 27, 1815. Similarly, in 1831, after the dethronement of Tsar Nicholas I, the insurgent elites were free to embark on an unfettered constitutional debate on the systemic reform of the state. Both in 1814/1815 and in 1831, Polish political and intellectual elites faced a dilemma as to whether the Constitution of 3 May could serve mainly as a monument to and symbol of Polish history, or whether it still had the potential to be directly applied; and if so, then to what extent and under what conditions? The publication is devoted to exploring the answers to these questions.

The Springtime of Nations in Germany is mostly associated with the views of various moderate liberals who played leading roles during these revolutionary events. The case is different when it comes to the members of the most radical wing within the liberal movement, the so-called “democrats.” Their ideas are described far less frequently. The article presented analyzes the idea of human rights in the view of Gustav Struve – one of the most important figures in the German democratic movement. During the German Springtime of Nations, the notion of human rights was one of the most frequently discussed but also variably understood problems. G. Struve’s views regarding this question refer not only to the idea of human rights, they also form a kind of political manifesto including solutions for various problems encountered by average citizens along with suggestions concerning an equitable structure of the social order. These postulates were revolutionary and radical but often incoherent. Thus, they fit well into the characteristics of the whole German democratic movement in the first half of the 19th century, which was seen as an unpopular, unsystematic, eclectic and immature phenomenon. The article first describes G. Struve’s life in the context of various events of the German Springtime of Nations. Subsequently, it analyzes the notion of the human being, his functioning in the social community and the definition of his rights. The article ends with an analysis of the material content of the concept of human rights in the view of the described German radical.

The paper deals with two different political interpretations of presidential power under the Third and Fifth French Republics, which clearly changed the position of the head of state in relation to the letter of constitutional acts that were in force at the time. Both of these interpretations were imposed by the presidents in office in the first years after the proper structures of the system of government had been established. The former (commonly known as the “Grévy Constitution”) led to the weakening of presidential power, and the latter (described as the “de Gaulle Constitution”) to its strengthening. Particular attention is thus paid to the formation of such particular unwritten norms of constitutional law in rationalized and non-rationalized parliamentary systems. In both cases, their basic feature turned out to be the ability to significantly modify the parliamentary system of government. In the last part of the paper, the stability and durability of the above-mentioned political interpretations of the aforementioned Constitutions are discussed. It is indicated that, in both cases, there were attempts to challenge these non-codified standards. Although the causes of such actions were different from each other, neither brought any meaningful success.

In his monumental non-fiction book, The Gulag Archipelago, Nobel Prize-winning author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn illustrates real events in Soviet labor camps in literary form. The depiction of EVIL is shocking. The totalitarian Soviet regime subjected millions of people to a horrific fate. As is generally well-known, A. Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a Soviet concentration camp. Mass terror was the essence of Soviet totalitarianism. A. Solzhenitsyn included a lecture on Soviet criminal law in his book, stressing the importance of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union in authorizing this terrorism. Solzhenitsyn himself was not a lawyer. However, his conclusions were very accurate. Article 58 of the Criminal Code, which consisted of seventeen paragraphs, defined “counter-revolutionary offenses”. They were obviously punished most severely. Article 58 became a weapon of terror for the Soviet authorities, who used it to convict millions of innocent people.