FAQ
T_LOGIN Log in

Don't have an account on our website?

T_REGISTER Register

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History

Search results

simple search

search np. “cognitive architectures” AND 1993-200 NOT Urban
advanced search
ex. 1234-6789
ex. 10.4467/16890027AP.16.022.6009
ex. Uniwersytet Jagielloński

Volume 18, Issue 3

Volume 18 (2025) Next

Publication date: 03.12.2025

Description

Excellence Initiative logotype


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 – Research University” at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

Cover design: Paweł Bigos

Licence: CC BY 4.0 licence icon

Editorial team

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

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

Secretary Dr Kacper Górski

Issue Editors Dr Anna Ceglarska, Tomáš Gábriš, Paulina Kamińska, Vilém Knoll, Dr hab., Prof. UJ Maciej Mikuła, Norbert Varga

Issue content

Piotr Fiedorczyk

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 277-293

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.019.22149
According to communist doctrine, law is an element of class rule. It belongs to the so-called superstructure, alongside such concepts as the state, power and coercion. Its content and functions are determined by the so-called base, that is, conditions of economic production. In the Communist Manifesto of 1848, there is the famous expression that law is the will of the ruling class elevated to the dignity of an act. From this came the assumption that the rightness of the law, its legitimacy, depended only on its origin from the proper, that is, revolutionary power. Such doctrinal assumptions resulted in the depreciation of the process of law-making in socialism; important was the fact of its connection with revolutionary power. Law in socialism was not intended to be a long existing entity, as it served for transformations towards the achievement of a communist regime. The subject of this text is the process of law-making in socialist Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The author will focus on the Polish example mainly, with which he is most familiar, and will limit himself to general remarks relating to the other two countries. The rejection of the tripartite division of power in the socialist system was to be expressed in the dominance of parliament as the body expressing the will of the working people. In theory, this was to mean the dominance of acts over decrees. In practice, it was different – socialist power bypassed parliament, abusing the form of decree. Among other things, this was how the fiction of public consultation on draft legislation manifested itself. A certain phenomenon was the process of creating codes: for example, the so-called legal bicentennial in Czechoslovakia (1949–1950) or the Codification Commission (1956–1969) in Poland. This text will pay attention to activities aimed at ensuring the proper legislative level of legal acts. In this context, the views of Adam Podgórecki will be discussed as distinguished by an originality unparalleled in other socialist countries.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Jakub Hablovič, Vilém Knoll, Tomáš Pezl

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 295-310

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.020.22150
The article discusses the development of constitutional law in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s. It briefly summarizes the most significant events that preceded this period and had the greatest impact on constitutional changes at the time. The most notable change of this period was the adoption of the “Ninth-of-May Constitution,” which laid the foundation for the implemented reforms. Given the importance of this document, the article describes the circumstances of its creation, including a competing constitutional draft. Special attention is paid to the constitution’s content and the additional legislation that supplemented and amended it. In connection with this legislation, the article provides examples demonstrating that constitutional guarantees of the separation of powers and fundamental human rights were violated and subordinated to the totalitarian regime led by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Norbert Varga

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 311-328

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.021.22151
The constitution of the Hungarian People’s Republic (Act XX of 1949) entered into force on 20 August 1949, which marks a milestone in the development of the Hungarian state, its legal system and legal life. The Constitution definitively closed the era in the history of the Hungarian constitution which has been called the “millennial constitution.” The first Hungarian socialist constitution was of decisive importance for the development of Hungarian law. It marked a key shift towards a socialist legal system. It provided a strong legal direction for the development of social and state life. The Constitution outlined the state’s foundations, including citizens’ rights and duties. It also defined the tasks of the legislature, its legislative functions and their essential content. Chapter VIII of the Constitution dealt with the fundamental rights and duties of citizens, which the state guarantees to its working population. The socialist state treated citizens’ rights as a subjective right. The state created new forms of legal safeguards for citizens’ rights (e.g. people’s control of state organs, a system of people’s judges in the judiciary). In the Hungarian constitution, there are different groups of citizens’ rights: the economic, social and cultural rights of citizens; equal rights of citizens and protection of marriage and family; freedoms of individuals; and finally, citizens’ duties. In my study, I will present the system of citizens’ rights in the Act XX of 1949 through an analysis of relevant primary sources and legislative material, including a discussion of the main positions in the literature. The aim of this study is to present the codification of the socialist rights of citizens, but it does not attempt to examine their implementation in practice.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Katarzyna Krzysztofek-Strzała

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 329-343

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.022.22152
Fundamental rights are those which, in the Constitution, provide protection for the most important rights and freedoms. Due to the nature of the People’s Republic of Poland, the guarantees provided by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Poland of 1952 were essentially limited to the rights granted to citizens only. In socialist states, their role was reduced to defining the position of the citizens and their relations with the state. These were civil, political rights, granted by the state, and not recognized as inherent rights of every human being. In its original version of 1952, the Constitution contained in Chapter 7 a catalog entitled: Fundamental rights and duties of citizens. After the 1976 amendment, this was Chapter 8. As fundamental rights, the Constitution recognized the following: the right to work, the right to rest, the right to health care, the right to education, the right to enjoy cultural achievements, equal rights for men and women, the right of marriage and the family to be protected by the state, the right of the youth to be protected by the state, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of speech, printing, assembly, rallies, marches and demonstrations, the right of association, equality of citizens regardless of nationality, race, or religion, the right to address complaints and grievances to state bodies, personal inviolability, the right to asylum of foreign citizens. The aim of this study is to characterize several selected fundamental rights introduced by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Poland. The analysis will include: the right to work, the right to education, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of speech, printing, assembly, rallies, marches and demonstrations, the right of association. The paper will present the way the above-mentioned rights were regulated in the Constitution and their interpretation in the socialist state. The method used in the work is the descriptive method.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Tomáš Gábriš, Peter Vyšný

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 345-370

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.023.22153
The development of procedural law and the overall framework of the administration of justice after 1948 took in many respects previously unknown forms. First of all, the convergence of civil and criminal procedural law in some aspects (e.g. the role of prosecutors) is a characteristic feature of the period, whereby the elements of non-contentious proceedings were extended even to adversarial proceedings, as a result of which the principle of searching for material (objective) truth became a characteristic principle for both civil and criminal proceedings. The deformations introduced after 1948 included also the abandonment of a separate labor justice system and administrative justice system (from 1952) in Czechoslovakia, when, on the one hand, the resolution of labor law disputes was entrusted to autonomous authorities at workplaces, and on the other hand, the Supreme Administrative Court was abolished in 1952 as allegedly conflicting with the sovereignty of the people, who were deemed to rule through the executive bodies and offices. Paradoxically, the arbitration, which is traditionally based on extra-judicial dispute resolution, was significantly weakened – it was only allowed for international business relations. Instead, a special, state-controlled arbitration was created for national business and economic relations – so called state arbitration, or economic arbitration, as a special system parallel to the judiciary. Thus, all in all, the judicial power and its competences were significantly curtailed in the observed period – in favor of mechanisms controlled by the executive and the Communist Party. These deformations became even stronger after 1960, when socialism was allegedly reached in Czechoslovakia, according to the wording of the 1960 Constitution. Further development brought another simplification of procedural law, whereas the administration of justice was to a yet even greater extent entrusted to extra-judicial bodies.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Kristóf Szivós

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 371-382

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.024.22154
After the Second World War, the Communist Party rose to power in Hungary with Soviet help. With the adoption of the new Constitution in 1949, the country became a socialist state. As part of the socialist transition, the country’s civil procedure was reshaped in 1951 and 1952 respectively. This paper focuses on two main subjects. First, it examines the basic concepts and principles after codifying of the newly adopted civil procedure code. A permanent question of the procedural codification is the distribution of tasks between the parties and the judge, and the role of the court. Apart from this, principles emerged previously unknown in procedural law. Secondly, the paper also analyses the role of the public prosecutor in the procedure as a representative of the interest of the socialist state.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Vilém Knoll, Marián Byszowiec

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 383-403

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.025.22155
This article focuses on changes to the legal system made in the period from February 1949 onwards in connection with the so-called legal biennial in Czechoslovakia, namely in substantive and procedural criminal law. On one side, such changes were aimed at bringing the Czechoslovak legal system closer to the Soviet model and thus providing tools for fighting the enemies of the Communist Party, whether perceived or real. These consisted of, for example, changes to the merits of individual crimes, in particular of the crime of high treason. Another goal was to control bodies involved in criminal proceedings and thus ensure decision-making in accordance with the party line, for example by the mass implementation of the institute of lay judges. Furthermore, the article focuses on compliance with, or rather mass violations of, socialist legality in criminal proceedings, from arresting individuals, through their unlawful detention, to filing lawsuits and deciding on guilt and punishment for alleged crimes – in political trials – or actually committed crimes – for example, while attempting to recruit informants and collaborators for various security forces. The article further points out that in many cases the decisive factor and driving force behind criminal proceedings was representatives of the Communist Party, who controlled, directed, and otherwise interfered with the independence of the judiciary, public prosecution bodies, security and other state agencies, both to the detriment of, or the other way round (and more often) for the benefit of, selected individuals.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Jakob Maziarz

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 405-426

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.026.22156
The system, organization, and practice of the judicial authorities in communist Poland (1944–1989) as instruments of a totalitarian and authoritarian system are well known. Over the past 35 years, numerous studies have been published on the judicial crimes of that period, especially from 1944 to 1956. Most of these studies are historical, while some are legal. Meanwhile, during the communist era, the state organized the activities of the legal protection organs not only to protect the existing political situation, but also to regulate and stabilize social relations, as in any other country. These aspects of the activities of the legal protection organs were widely discussed in legal literature until 1989 when the focus shifted to describing the judiciary as an instrument for maintaining communist authority. This is not surprising; it was the closing of a gap that had existed for many years. However, enough time has passed since the collapse of the communist system to take a fresh look at how the system of legal protection bodies – i.e., courts (including administrative courts since 1980), the Constitutional Tribunal (since 1986 only), the prosecution service, the bar, the bar of legal advisors, notaries, state commercial arbitration, misdemeanor boards, and other minor institutions that existed on a temporary basis – was organized and operated. Of particular interest is how the independence of bodies that are self-governing by nature and for historical reasons has been curtailed (the bar and the notary). The fundamental research question is whether the legal protection system in the People’s Republic of Poland protected citizens’ rights, and how much it was merely a façade designed to conceal an organized apparatus of repression and coercion, especially after 1956. This question is important because the political transformation of 1989 brought only partial changes to the organization of the system in terms of both structure and personnel. This suggests that the system functioning until 1989 could be adapted to the conditions of a democratic constitutional state. To this end, it is necessary to examine the similarities and differences between the Polish system and those in other countries with established traditions of the rule of law.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Marek Strzała

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 427-444

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.027.22157
In Poland after WW II the political power belonged to the communist parties. After (considered as falsified) elections in 1947 the Communist Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) formally gained authority to rule in Poland and introduce laws corresponding with the communist ideology. In September 1948, after previous contrary policy, the PPR decided to start agricultural collectivization in Poland, which corresponded with the decision of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (Cominform) about agricultural collectivization in all countries of the Soviet bloc. Soon after the unification of the PPR with the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), which resulted in establishing in December 1948 the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR), which monopolized political power in Poland till 1989, the authorities began to prepare grounds for agricultural collectivization, i.e. to prepare monopolization of the agricultural production in Poland by the agricultural production cooperatives. In this first phase of collectivization (1949–1956) amendments were made to the Act of October 29, 1920, on cooperatives. The PZPR also started to issue instructions dealing with types of the cooperatives and their structure. There were also issued model by-laws of agricultural production cooperatives of different types. Simultaneously, the authorities applied measures (legal and illegal) to encourage countryside inhabitants to establish and take part in agricultural production cooperatives. Agricultural collectivization resulted in a decrease in the volume of agricultural goods, which with the failure in forcing farmers to participate in the system of agricultural production cooperatives, forced the authorities to change the approach to the issue of collectivization. In 1956 the PZPR decided to introduce major changes to the model of agricultural production cooperative, which resulted in the dissolution of the majority of created cooperatives.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Adriana Pollák

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 445-463

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.028.22158
The author here presents an informative study offering a brief synthesis of the significant legislative and political steps during the first years of the collectivization and socialisation policy of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and its plans for the overall transformation of law from bourgeois to socialist, particularly in relation to property laws regarding land and the cooperative movement. In the reality of post-war Czechoslovak cooperatives and agriculture, these processes insensitively and destructively affected independent farmers and non-socialist cooperative forms of business. After the communists rose to power in Czechoslovakia after February 1948, a vigorous collectivization process began in the first phase of the collectivization of Czechoslovak rural areas from 1949 to 1953 (or at least until the beginning of 1953), and as a result of the concentrated communist pressure on the existing agriculture and cooperative movement, new socialist cooperatives and agricultural cooperative law were established, the basic legal framework of which and its problematic implementation during the first years of communist totality are presented by the author.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Benedek Varga

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 465-482

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.029.22159
In my study I am going to analyze the codification of criminal law in the socialist era in Hungary. In order to put the topic into context, I examined the political and historical circumstances which contributed to the legislative processes. Firstly, my research will address the question of how did the socialist ideology affect the traditional dogmatic system of substantive criminal law? Secondly I will analyze the erosion of the main principles of criminal law, for example the principle of nullum crimen sine lege/ nulla poena sine lege, and how the socialist legislation violated these principles. Thirdly, I focused on the development of economic crimes, examining the relationship of law and the socialist planned economy, as well as the codification technique of these crimes. Since the socialist era can be divided into several sub-periods, the trends in criminal legislation differ from one period to another, and therefore I basically undertook the detailed analysis of one sub-era, the Rákosi-dictatorship. As far as the sources are concered, I reviewed systematically the relevant criminal law literature and I analysed specific economic crimes through archival sources from the Section XXV of the Budapest City Archives. Also an important element of the research was the overview of the Diaries of the National Assembly from the Hungarian Parliamentary Collection, as it helped gain a deeper understanding of codification.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Vendulka Valentová

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 483-493

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.030.22160
The currency reform of June 1, 1953, became one of the dark points in the history of the Czechoslovak state. Almost overnight, people’s savings turned into a worthless pile of crowns. The regime of the time kept it a secret until the last moment. More than a hundred protests broke out across the country, the largest of which took place in Pilsen. The currency reform, which was being prepared by a team of economists led by Václav Hůla with the help of Soviet advisors, was presented to the population as a blow against the “speculative elements” and a victory for the working people. However, when people first felt its real effects on June 1, spontaneous protests and strikes broke out in many places. The events in Pilsen were the most turbulent. In addition to the West Bohemian metropolis, larger unrest took place in Strakonice, Bohumín, Ostrava and Prague. Many participants in the protests ended up in prison, labor camps, or were sentenced to other forms of punishment. One of the harshest was forced eviction. The State Security, the militia and the army expected some resistance, but they did not expect it to happen in key factories, such as the Škoda Plzeň or ČKD factory in Prague. The biggest impact on society was that the motivation to work, the desire to save and the ability to take care of oneself for a long time was undermined. People’s loss of economic self-sufficiency due to actions of the state and the Communist Party, their subjugation to the state and forced dependence on state revenues and state salaries was proof of the state’s bankruptcy.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Dénes Legeza

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 495-508

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.031.22161
This paper examines the transformation of Hungarian copyright law between 1945 and 1952, tracing its shift from a market-oriented model to a socialist framework under state control. The study explores codification efforts, collective agreements, and the increasing centralization of publishing. Early postwar attempts at legislative reform were largely unsuccessful due to political instability and shifting priorities within the Ministry of Culture. Instead, copyright regulation was implemented through ministerial decrees, which significantly altered the legal relationship between authors and publishers. Nationalization led to greater state control over royalties and publishing agreements, aligning Hungarian copyright law with the Soviet model while maintaining selective adherence to international conventions such as the Berne Convention. The paper concludes that this period established a hybrid system of copyright regulation, blending socialist ideology with pragmatic legal continuity, the effects of which persisted throughout the socialist era.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Máté Pétervári

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 509-524

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.032.22162
With regard to insolvency cases in Hungary, the Interwar period was dominated by the bankruptcy procedure and the compulsory non-bankruptcy settlement procedure. The Second World War generated big changes in the field of economic law, because the formation of the socialist relations in the economy pushed the economic legal rules into the background. But this was not true for the insolvency law, since the state had an active law-making activity in this field in the interest of the socialist rearrangement. My paper examined this change on the level of the legal rules, in the practice and in the Hungarian jurisprudence, because my aim was to give a complete picture about the insolvency law in Hungary in the years of the socialist rearrangement. My research initially was to focus on looking up the judicial documents concerning the Hungarian insolvency practice between 1948 and 1951, but this attempt was unsuccessful because of the lack of such documents. For this reason, I turned my attention to the official gazettes as the only means of establishing the number of insolvency cases. According to the results of this analysis, it was determined that bankruptcy procedures and compulsory non-bankruptcy procedures disappeared from 1949 onwards from the Hungarian judicial procedure, and they were replaced by the liquidation ruled by Government Decree No. 560/1949. This liquidation was an administrative procedure, since it was the Centre of Financial Institutions that carried out the compulsory liquidation. In this era, the private autonomy was ceased in the insolvency law, and the state dominated these processes, and the insolvency law became as a liquidation process the instrument of nationalisation.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Mária Homoki-Nagy

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 525-540

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.033.22163
The development of Hungarian private law was fundamentally determined by the fact that its codification remained unsuccessful until 1959. The area of marriage law was a partial exception to this. After the spread of the Reformation, several other Christian denominations (eg. Reformed, Evangelical) lived in Hungary in addition to the Roman Catholic denomination, which led to legal uncertainty in the field of marriage law, especially in the 19th century. This primarily unfolded around the prohibition and the permissibility of the dissolution of a validly concluded marriage bond. After long social and professional debates, Act XXXI of 1894 on marriage law was born. With this law, the possibility of the judicial dissolution of marriages became common. However, this was possible only if one of the unconditional grounds for divorce was proven and, based on this, the court ordered one or both of the pronounced spouses guilty. This law was in force until the birth of the Family Law Act. A Prime Minister’s decree issued in 1945 broke the fault-based principle, when it allowed marriages to be terminated without the declaration of fault. This decree made the dissolution of the marriage bond easier, but it did not solve many other problems arising from it. On the one hand, the Marriage Act allowed the innocent wife to bear her husband’s name even after the dissolution of the marriage bond, but on the other hand, the guilty husband was obliged to maintain his wife. After the entry into force of the decree, after no guilt had been established, the woman who considered herself innocent could claim maintenance in a separate lawsuit. In the course of the research, an answer was sought tothe question of whether the courts judged cases on the basis of evidence similar to or different from that required by the Marriage Act. Did the courts also take into account the social and economic situation that developed during World War II?
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Zdzisław Zarzycki, Paweł Kaźmierski

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 541-556

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.034.22164
The new law on marriage (and civil status records) introduced in post-war Poland on 1 January 1946 created a new legal status for many planning to enter into marriage and those who wanted to divorce. The law unified on a national scale, treated marriage as a secular institution, and concluded before a state civil registrar. The spouses could enter only a subsequent religious marriage according to their confession. Five outdated marriage codifications, dating back to partition times, were eliminated from legal circulation. A new secular divorce law was introduced, which was separated from the religious norms of spouses, and thus Catholics were allowed to divorce. The socialist state limited the freedom to divorce by introducing a broad catalog of positive grounds for divorce. The possibility of divorce upon the spouses’ unanimous request was introduced for a period of 3 years (1946–1948). This was a chance for spouses who had not had children and had not lived together for many years to apply for divorce. The practical effect of introducing the new divorce law after 1946 was that the District Courts in Kraków and Słupsk saw a sharp increase in divorce cases, and the parties initiating divorce were increasingly women (wives).
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Miriam Laclavíková, Ingrid Lanczová

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 557-587

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.035.22165
Family law underwent fundamental material and formal changes during the people’s democratic regime in Czechoslovakia, ruled by the Communist Party from 1948. The government needed a new family law, which, in the spirit of the rhetoric of the time, was supposed to be freed from the influence of the Church. As a result of the new approach, the state started to thoroughly supervise families and familial relationships with a clear goal – to place them under ideological patronage.
The starting point for the transformation of family law (and the entire legal order) was the constitution adopted in May 1948 (Constitutional Law no. 150 of 1948 Coll., commonly known as the “Ninth-of-May Constitution.”). Shortly after, the new Act on Family Law no. 265 of 1949 Coll. came into force and stayed in effect until the socialist recodification and the follow-up of the Constitution of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic of 1960 which was the Family Act no. 94 of 1963 Coll.
The authors present and analyse the fundamental principles of the people’s democratic Czechoslovak family law, namely:
  • compulsory civil marriage substituting the possibility to choose between a civil and Church marriage
  • equality between men and women in familial, marital, and property relations
  • equal rights for children regardless of their marital or non-marital origin (abolition of differences between children born in and out of wedlock)
  • joint parental authority substituting the sole paternal authority over children
  • deepening of the public (state) interest in the child policy – a new understanding of the termination of marriage by divorce
  • a new concept of a socialist family and a socialist marriage built upon new definitions of the functions of family and marriage.
The authors also thoroughly focus on the legal regulation of marriage in the Czechoslovak people’s democratic legal order. In detail, they describe and analyse marriage formation, personal and property relations between spouses, the dissolution of marriage, fault in the breakdown of marriage, and the interests of minor children in the divorce proceedings.
The authors base their research on historical legal theory and practice, including historical legal acts, legal drafts, explanatory reports, case law, historical school textbooks, ideologically influenced papers and books to provide the reader with a holistic understanding of the family law in Czechoslovakia during the years 1948–1960.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Jindřich Psutka, Denisa Kotroušová

Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History, Volume 18, Issue 3, Volume 18 (2025), pp. 589-610

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844131KS.25.036.22166
This article focuses on the development of Czechoslovak inheritance law in the period after the end of the World War II, with an emphasis on the years from 1945 to 1951. Inheritance law underwent a significant transformation during this period, which was a direct reflection of the radical political, economic and social changes in the post-war period, which ultimately resulted in the rise of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1948. The inheritance law, which had been for the most part firmly established in the General Civil Law of 1811, was incorporated into the newly adopted so-called Middle Civil Code (No. 141/1950 Coll.). The model for this regulation was the Soviet inheritance law. The newly designed inheritance law thus already clearly reflected all the influences of the socialization of private law, often characterized by a significant departure from the traditional mechanisms and institutes of the regulation of the succession of inheritance known from the previous regulation. Inheritance law was newly linked to the concept of various categories of property – socialist property, personal property and private property. The stated aim was to make the objects of succession primarily objects of personal use and the fruits of one’s own labour. As a whole, inheritance law was intended to be a set of rules aimed in particular at simplifying the transfer of property in the event of death within the immediate family, and should primarily serve the living, not the dead. This corresponded to a substantial restriction on the autonomy of the testator’s will, which became even more pronounced in the following period.
The main objective of the article is to focus on the most significant manifestations of the outlined conceptual changes and their real impact on the succession alongside the process of the unification of inheritance law in Czechoslovakia, which took place in the mentioned period.
Download PDF PDF
Read more Next

Files to download

Download PDF Title and imprint pages PDF Download PDF Table of Contents PDF Download PDF List of abbreviations PDF Download PDF From the Editors PDF

Słowa kluczowe: law-making, inflation of legislation, sources of law, socialism, Constitutional Tribunal, stalinisation, sovietisation, law, constitutional law, legal history, Ninth-of-May Constitution, totalitarianism, Hungarian socialist constitution, citizens’ rights, parliamentary debate, system of citizen’s right, Act XX of 1949, Polish Constitution of 1952, fundamental rights, the right to work, the right to education, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of speech, printing, assembly, rallies, marches and demonstrations, the right of association, procedural law, Czechoslovakia, criminal procedural law, civil procedural law, arbitration, labor justice, administrative justice, acting in good faith, basic principles, civil procedure, codification, socialist state, Czechoslovakia, continuity of law, criminal law, independence of justice, political trials, socialist legality, bar, notary, legal protection body, administrative court, Constitutional Tribunal, prosecution service, agricultural production cooperative, agricultural collectivization, 1949–1956, Poland, Polish People’s Republic, collectivization of the village, land reform, agrarian-cooperative law, cooperative movement, United Farmer Cooperative (JRD), village rich (“kulak”), socialist criminal law, economic crimes, criminal dogmatics, currency reform, Czechoslovakia, Pilsen, protest action, repression, state bankruptcy, big financial theft, Hungarian copyright law, socialist legal system, cultural policy, nationalization, publishing agreements, collective agreements, Berne Convention, state control, royalties, legal regulation in the field of bankruptcy law, economic law, practice of the Hungarian courts, jurisprudence after the Second World War, building the socialist legal order in Hungary, marital law, divorce, family law, maintenance, dissolution of the marriage bond, separation, People’s Republic of Poland, marriage law, family law, civil marriage, divorce, marriage annulment, marriage separation, family law, people´s democracy, Czechoslovakia, 1948–1960, totalitarian regime, principles, marriage, dissolution of marriage, minor children, inheritance law, testator, will, socialism, communism, legitimacy, property, General Civil Code of 1811, Civil Code of 1950, Civil Law, 1948

Funding information

Excellence Initiative logotype


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 – Research University” at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.