The paper analyses the fundamentals of civil law liability of the State for the harm resulting from the excercising of public power in both the Austrian constitutional monarchy(1867-1918) as well as in the Second Republic of Poland (1918-1939). The paper is designed to demonstrate the extent to which decisions of the Austrian Supreme Tribunal in the area of compensatory liability - were reflected in the decisions of the Polish Supreme Court of the inter-war time. The possibility of survival, in this area, of the Austrian legal thought in the independent Poland was justified both by the binding force of the same Civil Code (which was the ABGB still in force until 1946 in the area of former Austrian partition) as well as by similar constitutional regulations. Both the Austrian Constitution of December 1867 as well as the Polish Constitution of March 1921 accepted the liability of State for harm done to an individual by the agencies of State power, the harm resulting from the activities of the officials who operated contrary to law. Yet the regulations of both Constitutions were deprived of executory provisions. Similiar (and partly even identic) legal state was, to a large extent, decisive of the adopting by the Polish courts of the adjudicating line characteristic of the Austrian courts. The analysis of both the Austrian as well as the Polish court decisions disclosed that in numerous cases in which compensatory claims were raised the courts tended toward the weakening of the principle of the absence of liability of the State for the harm done by its agencies as due to the shortage of the detailed provisions. The first attempt to remedy this absence was made by the Supreme Tribunal (Ober-Gerichtshof) as well as by the Tribunal of State (Reichsgericht) in the monarchical Austria. The arguments resorted to by the two Tribunals facilitated the recognition in 1931 by the Polish Supreme Court of the principle of limited liability of State Treasury for the harm done to somebody as a result of excercising the public power by the State agencies.

The paper discusses the unjust enrichmennt as found in the Polish Code of Obligations of 1933. The discussion is conducted in a comparative way and makes allusions to other regulations of the time (those detectable in the ABGB, Code Civil, BGB, Obligationenrecht). It also makes reference to the solution accepted in the Polish Civil Code of 1964. What was discussed was the very construction of unjust enrichment as found in the aforementioned regulations (1), grounds for the claims (2), the scope within which the duty to return the enrichment applied (3), the nature of the claim – whether it was autonomous or subsidiary (4). In his final remarks, the author tried to assess the discussed institution as regulated in the Code of Obligations (5).

The paper discusses an unknown episode in the history of Polish political emigration during World War II. In order to bring to accountability the members of the former government there were established, under the auspices of government in exile, the special investigation commissions. They were designed to determine the causes of the defeat suffered by Poland in the war of 1939. The commissions collected documents and information but frequently exceeded the boundaries of their competence resorting rather to political vendetta than amassing the archival material. The paper explores an individual case but both the persons involved in it as well as its context may arouse our interest. Both personae dramatis were the functionaries of one of the investigation commissions. It was in the course of the work of the Commission that T. Cyrian – who, before the war, was a judge of the Poznań Apellate Court – become accused of having collaborated with the German intelligence. While retorting the blames laid on him, the accused filed an action with the court against the slanderer. The description of the trial shows the atmosphere prevalent both in the millieu of Polish emigration as well as in the commissions themselves. Even the members of the commissions were not protected against the blames that might be laid on them or defamations as produced by the most impassioned devotees of the policy that tended to make the members of the previous regime answerable.

The small Penal Code may be classified among the most repressive acts of Communist penal law. On its basis there were brought to penal responsibility not only the soldiers of independent underground or the activists of opposition groupings but also to individuals not engaged in political struggle. The author discusses the court decisions of the time as made on basis of the discussed Code. While exploring the problem, he relies on the hitherto made research. He draws not only on the literature which was published after the 1989 transformation but invokes also the research that came to being at the time of the binding force of the decree of 13 June 1946 on the offences particularly dangerous in the era of reconstruction of the State.

The paper is concerned with the development of legal history research in Poland in the post-Stalinist period, up to the end of the 1960s. The legal historians actually engaged themselves in the academic research of the time and developed, to the extent to which that was possible, the contacts with the western University centres. What was published were the significant handbooks and monographs. The publications laid out the new important research lines. The paper reviews, in a synthetic way, the interests of the authors of the publications both in the areas of Polish constitutional and legal history as well as in the field of general history of state and law. The publications of the most important authors were presented.

The monograph written by Grzgorz Smyk and devoted to public administration in th Kingdom of Poland in 1864-1915, shows – against a broad comparative background – the problems of organizing and shaping of the administrative organs as well as the doctrinal basis of the functioning of administration and the transformation of the latter. The author of the monograph verifies the thesis, firmly formulated in the research, on the full Russification and unification of the discussed administration with that of the Russian Empire. In his discourse the author exploits abundant source material, particularly the normative one. The conclusions to which he arrives are based on large bibliography and wide formal and dogmatic analysis. The discussed volume is characterized by the original, innovative internal outlay that refers to the systematics of the general part of administrative law.