The objective of this contribution is to analyse the meaning of the expression uti frui arbitrio boni viri. This expression is contained in one of the clauses of the cautio fructuaria, which is the warranty given by the usufructuary to the owner. We can find this expression in a dozen passages of the Digest. The entire title 9 of book seven is dedicated to the cautio fructuaria, which was given in the form of a stipulatio praetoria. Uti frui arbitrio boni viri raises a question, that this paper aims to answer: does it refer to an arbitrator or to an abstract standard of behaviour? The expression arbitrium boni viri is not the only one that we fi nd in our sources. In fact there is a concurrent expression, diligens pater familias, which can be found in two passages of the Digest and in two passages of the Pauli Sententiae. I aim to understand why our sources left us two different expressions and if there is a difference between them.

“Text and Textualization” examines the various symbolic and practical uses of a law book possessed by the High Court of Magdeburg Law at the Castle of Kraków through the entirety of its four centuries of operation. The essay contends that this book, now preserved at the library of the Jagiellonian University as manuscript codex BJ 168, played a vital symbolic role alongside its practical function. In the course of detailing these aspects, the study suggests that the multiple purposes for which the codex was used are illustrative of several aspects of the court’s peculiar culture during its medieval period of operation and beyond. Methodologically, the essay employs the notion of textualization as a tool for understanding what roles codex BJ 168 played in the context of the culture of the court and how its component texts represented different varieties of legal consciousness within that culture. First, the essay argues that the codex served an important purpose as a textualized object – as the symbolic representation of the Ius supremum Magdeburgense castri Cracoviensis and all that it signifi ed. Secondly, the codex served as an exemplar of ius scriptum – law literally textualized – that composed a repository of, and reference to, the law represented by the Ius supremum. The essay ultimately argues that the dual function of the codex, which dates to the court’s fourteenth-century foundation, points to the complexity of the social and cultural context in which later medieval legal development occurred. Indeed, this duality represents a general transformation in the broader legal culture of Latin Christendom – a culture that was marked by the coexistence of different perspectives in legal consciousness – and suggests that elements of both continuity and change can comfortably coexist within a legal culture over long historical periods.

The historical experience of the Nazi era and the former GDR caused that nowadays the public in Germany gives particular attention to the Constitutional State (Rechtstaat). In everyday routine the Constitutional State appears particularly under the slogan of legal protection, judicial control as excercised by independent judiciary, the fair trial, the judicial hearing and the stages of appeal. The author describes the topical problem of the Constitutional State, the tension between the legal certainty and justice, parliament and jurisdiction, and illustrates his discussion with practical examples. Like any other societas constituta et ordinata thus also the Church needs judicial authorities to settle its internal conflicts. The author reports the efforts that are made to reduce the evident deficit in the legal protection (e.g. in the areas of labour law and penal law) mainly on the level of local Church.

In 1848, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) refused to yield to the enthusiasm of the Republican Camp about universal suffrage and the link established between political and social reforms. In his first book published after the Revolution of February (La solution du probléme social), he questioned the legitimacy of the republican conception of representation. But if the short history of the Second Republic soon confirmed his fears about the abuses inherent in representation, his criticism of universal suffrage sounds still useful when we want to apprehend the present day debate devoted to direct democracy.
In any presidential system, the time of elections becomes the moment when a nation looks at themselves. In France, as in many other western countries, the elections bring substantial debates about the democracy. In 2007, the calls for direct democracy made up a central point of political debates and were related to a long time defiance to the representative system. They strangely echoed the debates that took place in the Second Republic after the deputies’ betrayal of the electoral law of May 31, 1850. In the article we show how Proudhon’s political thought can help us think about direct democracy.

The paper discusses the extent to which the 19th century regulations of alimonies as awarded within the frame of matrimonial relationships had an impact on the formation of claims of alimony as found in the Hungarian Code of Private Law of 1928. The paper discusses the alimony as paid to one of the spouses at the time when the matrimonial tie was still continued but also when the alimony was granted as a temporary device and also when it was awarded after the divorce decree had been granted.

The essay recalls the professional activities of Hungarian lawyers between 1919 and 1944 as well as the basics of the law and order applied by them. It also deals with the institutional foundations of Hungarian legal education. At that time education was built on two pillars: universities of sciences and so-called legal academies. The law faculties of universities alone were privileged to issue the Juris Doctor degree. Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged and Pécs hosted such universities. Pécs faculty started its operation in 1923 after being transferred from Pozsony. After depicting the Hungarian legal system the author focuses his attention on the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Pécs. He introduces the history of the Faculty’s architecture, its symbols as well as its objects of memory. Between 1923 and 1944 many distinguished professors taught at the Faculty. What is worth recalling are not only their scholarly merits but also their characters and habituses. The memory of these scholars is kept by the classrooms that were named after them. Finally, an insight is provided into the colorful world of law student associations in Pécs and the buzzing life of undergraduates.

Thanks to efforts made by the Hungarian Royal Curia which expressed its concern for law unification there appeared in Hungary in the 1920’s. the so called Process Commission. Its activities provoked an animated discussion among the representatives of the law research. The paper focuses on commenting the arguments raised by the researchers involved in the dispute.

The paper discusses the Hungarian legislation that regulated the ownership referring to real property in the period between the World Wars. The discussion included also the review of the law on colonization and division of the land, as well as the law on bank loans offered to those who were professionally engaged in farming. In addition, the authoress made an analysis of the archaic institution of fideicomissum. While depicting the background of legislative efforts of the time, the authoress recalled the developments that took place prior to the discussed changes in the ownership relationships. Therefore she discussed also the 19th century reforms that abolished serfdom and serf labour, introduced the land and mortgage register etc.

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.

Article is devoted to the issue return to the Polish Poles since the end of World War II after the turn of the time associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a description of the tests and methods of approach to this compelling phenomenon of migration that is repatriation, in the framework of administrative and legal solutions.