Volume 18 Issue 1

Volume 18 (2025)

Publication date: 10.2025

Description

The publication was funded by the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University granted within the Priority Research Area Heritage under the program “Excellence Initiative” at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

Cover design: Paweł Bigos.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief Prof. dr hab. Krystyna Chojnicka

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Dr hab., Prof. UJ Maciej Mikuła

Secretary Dr Kacper Górski

Editors of the Issue 1 Dr hab., Prof. UJ Maciej Mikuła, Dr Kacper Górski

Issue content

Articles

Dzieciobójstwo w balladach na podstawie wybranych utworów szkockich i polskich. Studium prawno-literackie

Katarzyna Jaworska-Biskup

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18 Issue 1, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 1-20

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.001.21621

The article discusses the representation of infanticide in selected Scottish and Polish ballads. The analysis aims to compare Scottish and Polish law and literature. The selected texts show that, despite different cultural settings, there are many similarities in depicting infanticide. In both Polish and Scottish literature, the law is a tool of oppression and revenge used against women. Another function of the law is to deter potential female perpetrators from killing their babies. Some ballads portray the changes in the law that happened in the 19th century.

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Wakuf w świetle prac legislacyjnych nad ustawą z dnia 21 kwietnia 1936 r. o stosunku Państwa do Muzułmańskiego Związku Religijnego w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej

Eryk Zywert

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18 Issue 1, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 21-42

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.002.21622

In 1936, the waqf, a traditional Muslim religious donation, became a sui generis property right existing in the Polish legal system. The purpose of this article is to analyze the materials of the legislative work on the Act of April 21, 1936 on the Relationship of the State to the Muslim Religious Community in the Republic of Poland in the context of the threads concerning the normalization of the waqf. This issue is complemented by considerations of the earlier history of the institution in question in the Polish lands. As a result, it becomes possible to present the evolution of the waqf – from the pattern in Muslim countries through the way it existed in the former legal system in Poland to the current law. This article contributes to the discourse on the model of functioning of religious communities and the impact of genetically religious norms on the state legal order.

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The Jewish Criminal Underground in Occupied Cracow – Case Studies

Alicja Jarkowska

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18 Issue 1, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 43-68

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.003.21623

The article discusses selected crimes committed by Jews during World War II, such as burglary, theft, fencing, usury, and, less frequently, black marketeering and fraud. Most of the criminals knew each other before the war, and their criminal activities were a continuation of these contacts. It also presents statistics on the crimes most often committed by Jews (individually or as part of organized gangs). The article also analyzes the activities of Jewish and Polish-Jewish gangs, as well as cooperation between different groups in the Polish-Jewish criminal underworld. These groups intermingled, as evidenced by the Yiddishisms that appeared in the criminal jargon still used today. Cooperation between organized crime groups began many years before the outbreak of World War II and was sometimes formed on an ad hoc basis to serve common interests. The article attempts to determine whether Jewish criminals continued their activities and whether anything changed with the outbreak of war.

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Editions of primary sources

Podstawowe zasady projektu prawa spadkowego z 1939 r. Edycja źródłowa

Grzegorz Nancka

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18 Issue 1, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 69-81

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.004.21624

The publication is a study of a hitherto unknown and unpublished source related to the activities of the 1939 Subcommittee on Succession Law of the Codification Commission of the Republic of Poland. The source edition contains the basic principles of inheritance law drafted by Kazimierz Przybyłowski after he became the reporter of the project. The previously unknown principles provide insight into the subcommittee’s assumptions guiding its work on inheritance law immediately before the outbreak of World War II.

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Review articles

O sejmach elekcyjnych na nowo. Książka Tomasza Kucharskiego, Sejmy elekcyjne w Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów w latach 1632–1733. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2021 (ss. 433, ISBN: 978-83-7666-702-7).

Adam Moniuszko

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18 Issue 1, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 83-93

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.005.21625

This article discusses the book by Tomasz Kucharski devoted to the functioning of election sejms in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the years 1632–1733. The general assessment of this work is positive as its author successfully examines the electoral sejms in a synthetic way while showing the dynamics of the phenomenon. While doing so, he uses both historical and legal methods. Therefore, this review article includes some reflections on presentism as a scientific method, its benefits and limitations and, in addition, the advantages and disadvantages for the reviewed book. Kucharski usually copes well with the legal presentist approach. Due to the legal approach, he shows an interesting perspective on the functions of the sejm, the election procedures and the legal significance of the various actions taken during elections. Nevertheless, there are elements which, in my opinion, are a flaw in the method, e.g., the discussion of past elections through the prism of contemporary principles of electoral law, and the occasional inappropriate reasoning on the basis of past legal acts, resulting partially from the use of old editions of source materials without necessary precaution. These examples, despite the fact that overall they are rare in this well-written book, may serve as a warning to scholars using legal methods in describing past institutions.

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Uwagi na marginesie książki Michała Zbigniewa Dankowskiego Liberum veto. Chluba czy przekleństwo? Zrywanie sejmów w ocenach społeczeństwa drugiej połowy XVII wieku. Gdynia: Czarny Gryf, 2018 – Toruń: Jagiellońskie Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 2019.

Izabela Lewandowska-Malec

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18 Issue 1, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 95-114

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.006.21626

The article examines an early Polish parliamentary institution that continues to be assessed very negatively: the liberum veto. Michał Zbigniew Dankowski addresses this issue in his monograph, in which he adopts a highly critical stance toward the nobility. In his opinion, the decline of parliamentarism resulted from the nobility’s diminishing civic awareness, political culture, and personal responsibility. On the one hand, the primary figure responsible for establishing the liberum veto, the nuncio from Upita, Władysław Siciński, is portrayed in an extremely negative light. On the other hand, however, Dankowski attempts to justify his actions. In this article, I challenge the arguments presented in Dankowski’s book, asserting that it does not constitute an in-depth study of the liberum veto or the reasons for its entrenchment in the noblemen’s minds as the most powerful guarantee of freedom of speech.

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