Professor Ana F. Vrdoljak works at the University of Technology Sydney, teaching courses on international law and cultural heritage, and formerly served as Dean of Research at the UTS Faculty of Law. She is also the author of International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects as well as the editor of the Oxford Handbook on International Cultural Heritage Law. Her tenure as both an attorney and academic have allowed her to develop several successful initiatives, including a UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage at UTS dedicated to the intersection of cultural heritage law and gender studies (currently in progress). 

The freedom of artistic expression is not absolute. Since an artistic activity may threaten someone’s dignity, privacy, religious freedom, or freedom of conscience, there may be limits imposed on that right, such as in the case of pornography. Pornography is a phenomenon which has accompanied humanity since the dawn of its history, although it has been considered a crime from the Nineteenth Century onwards. At that time, the evaluation of which communications constituted pornography was changing rapidly. The sexualization of modern culture contributes to the fact that content formerly considered pornographic seems to have no such character today. At the moment, there is no satisfactory uniform definition of pornography either in international law or domestic law. Pornography is often considered dangerous and meriting prosecution on religious grounds as opposed to secular ones. A similar phenomenon occurs in the realm of satire. As a result, both the European Union and Polish jurisdictions have no legal advice on the matter. On the one hand, satirists are allowed to ridicule people’s opinions and attitudes, and this constitutes a valid expression of artistic freedom. On the other hand, they should obey certain rules of the critique and refrain from infringing the rights of others. This paper provides some examples of cases supporting the thesis that although there are no explicit European standards on political and religious satire, some general standards in that matter have been established within the European Council legal system.

This article deals with the subject of intra-institutional censorship; that is, with cases restricting the freedom of artistic expression through the decisions of managing bodies in cultural institutions. The aim of this study is to draw attention to the problem of determining the actual scope of freedom of artistic creation through intra-institutional practice. It presents examples of such limitations as well as the basic legal and practical problems connected with them.

This article provides for a critical analysis of existing international instruments protecting the freedom of artistic expression and their application, as well as of the importance of that freedom as a significant development for the progress of mankind. A more detailed analysis is focused on the standard of protection for freedom of artistic expression under the European Convention on Human Rights. This ultimately leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to assess the need for a new treaty, which is likely to safeguard the aforementioned freedom more effectively.

On the 22nd of June 2018, the Law amending the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments and Other Laws was enacted. The new Act made changes to several previous legal Acts by introducing new provisions to the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments concerning the new offence of illegal searching of historical monuments and – for the first time – the application of administrative torts. The author discusses the new penal and administrative torts included in the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments in this article. It should be noted that there is an open question as to whether putting the new provisions into effect has strengthened the protection of historical monuments under the criminal law system.

This commentary presents an analysis of the court’s holding concerning the highly popular phenomenon of metal detecting, in the context of historical/cultural artifacts. According to the applicable law, searching for historical artifacts can only take place after obtaining the consent of the voivodeship monuments’ conservator; however, this duty is not respected in the majority of cases. Moreover, such searches often lead to the destruction of archaeological sites and illegal excavation of movable artefacts. The District Court in Tomaszów Mazowiecki pointed out that searching for historical/cultural artifacts using a metal detector shows all the features of a criminal offense regulated in Art. 108, the Law Amending the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments. This offense is typified as damaging and destroying a monument.

The II OSK 3/15 verdict of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court, dated 18 October 2016, is concerned with the Law Amending the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments, Article 36, Section 1, Clause 1; and Article 45, Section 1, Clause 1 and 2.

In the verdict of 18 October 2016, the Supreme Administrative Court clearly indicated the consequences of registering a building as a monument even after the prior issue of a construction permit and commencement of construction work on the property. The court further pointed out the conservation body’s lack of a proper analysis of the problem in their justification. The Building Code, Article 39, Section 1, and the Law Amending the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments, Article 36, Section 1, Clause 1, cannot be the basis for ruling out the conservator's actions in the situation described in this verdict.

The Supreme Administrative Court clearly emphasised that undertaking construction work according to a valid construction permit does not negate the competence of a conservation body to issue a decision based on  the Law Amending the Act on the Protection of Monuments and the Guardianship of Monuments, Article 45, Section 1, even if the property was included in the National Register of Historical Monuments after the relevant construction permit was issued. As soon as a building is added to the register, an investor is obligated to obtain a conservation permit, as mentioned in  Article 36, Section 1, Clause 1 of the previously mentioned act.

The object of the commented ruling concerns two separate issues, namely: the protection of a monument based on an entry of urban layout in the official Register of Monuments, and a single entry of a building (real estate) in the Register of Monuments. The entry of an urban layout in the Register of Monuments is classified as an area entry, not an individual one, which does not imply that objects located in such an area are exempt from monument protection. Applicable jurisprudence indicates quite a few discrepancies regarding the mutual relations between area entry and individual building entry, which determine the purpose of this commentary - to distinguish and analyse them in detail. What remains relevant is that while each of the buildings included in the layout entered in the Register of Monuments can be included separately into the register, this does not equate to a presumption that failing to enter such a building in the register precludes the legal protection resulting from an entry of the historic urban layout in the selfsame register. Of course, the scope of this protection will vary depending on whether the building registered corresponds to an urban layout rather than an individual entry. In the case of an area entry - the entry of an urban layout - the protection of the external features of the area’s related objects, which collectively form a conceptual whole, is protected, which aims to preserve the most valuable elements of the historical layout as well as the spatial composition of the complex.

Published in 1625, Palombe, ou la femme honorable, is a novel by Jean-Pierre Camus showing the model of a mondain, or worldly, Christian. With the example of count Fulgent, an immoral rake, who undergoes a spiritual transformation, Camus demonstrates that even a libertine courtesan can become a good Christian. However, such coexistence is possible only for those who have achieved spiritual maturity and who can distinguish vice from virtue, consciously renouncing immorality. Camus represents the marriage of mondains not as a source of pleasure or opportunity for a libertine lifestyle, but rather as a contract demanding certain commitments and renouncements. On entering marriage, Fulgent is not initially morally prepared for the social position and responsibilities that he must assume. He only becomes a good husband and Christian once he accepts the commitments of his social position, This is indeed how Camus defines virtue: as a conscious renouncement of licentiousness and a conscious acceptance of duties imposed by society. To turn back from the path of debauchery is a slow and difficult process, just as it is to learn to fulfil one’s moral duties.

The Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1789 made all  French citizens free and equal in the eyes of the law. However, it soon came to light that one half of the nation was deprived of civil rights in the name of the common good and so- called nature’s will. This article focuses on the speech of Jean Pierre André Amar who, in the autumn of 1793, presented on behalf of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety a report which would soon become the basis for the definitive exclusion of women from the sovereign body and their dismissal from the political sphere.

A woman’s identity, including her sexuality, reflects, as it were, her struggle for freedom within the domestic sphere, throughout history and culture, and charts her route to emancipation . In the context of cultural, moral, and ethical facts inspired by the theory of gender, the aim of the paper is to set forth a reflection on the question of the figure of the transgressive woman in French literature of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. This issue is viewed in relation to the sphere of the author’s personal life, as well as taking into account the historical and anthropological perspective related to the specificity and mentality of 19^th and 20^th century France; in particular, the  social and public roles assumed by women yet imposed on them by society. Literary works by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Françoise Sagan, and Marguerite Duras depict the picture of the modern woman, freed from the tight corset of etiquette, aware of her self-esteem, transgressing sexual taboos, and debunking fixed social and literary stereotypes.

The research strategy adopted in this paper aims to utilize a considerably broad observational field, making it possible to present the above issues from a  comparative perspective. From such a perspective, the picture of a woman contesting the fixed standards of the obedient wife and mother appears as a multi-level issue showing the complexity of her nature and an abundance of factors conditioning the female ego, who ultimately evolves from an initial aversion to bourgeois morality to an outright revolt manifesting itself through non-standard or even scandalous behaviour.

The article raises issues that pertain to the offence of infringement of religious freedom and insulting religious feelings (Polish Penal Code, Article 196) through the exercise of freedom of expression, especially freedom of art. Both religious freedom and artistic freedom are crucial values in a democratic society and should be protected. They interact in many ways by reinforcing or competing with each other. Thus, it is very important to find the right balance between the two in order to enforce these rights fairly. Both freedoms are guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as by domestic law, but it seems that as yet there is no common European standard on how to settle the conflict between those two freedoms. The author analyses several decisions by the European Court of Human Rights as well as Polish court decisions and views of the doctrine, in order to find some similarities and differences in the argumentation, concerning striking a proper balance between these values. Each case is strictly related to the cultural, social, and temporal context, which also influences the final decision. The author further outlines criteria on the limitation of artistic freedom guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution of the Republic of Poland to illustrate the situation.

This article aims to demonstrate the necessity of creating collaboration between cultural institutions,  which serves to provide the safeguarding of monuments originating in territories affected by armed conflicts and terrorist attacks. A solution proposed in the past is that of safe haven, which has now  been recognized by the international community. In this article, in addition to presenting historical perspectives of this idea, the concept of safe haven is analised from the lawyer’s perspective in national and international legislation and soft law, consisting of documents by the International Law Association, Association of Art Museum Directors, United Nations, and UNESCO. This analysis shows the advantages and disadvantages of practical application of safe haven in relation to United Nations Security Council  Resolution 2347 (2017).

There are a variety of methods that may be used in the analysis of crimes against cultural heritage which allow us to determine the level of risk. A case study covering all instances of crime against cultural goods during the period of one year allows us to note tendencies present in the behaviour of criminals, and helps develop methods to counteract similar crimes in the future. Based on the results of several such case studies, it is then possible to assess the risk of crime against national heritage in a much more complementary manner and minimise its occurrence. This article presents selected cases of crime in 2017 based on statistics prepared by the national police,National Revenue Administration,and border police. The study is part of an annual series and aims to illustrate the trends and threats related to monuments and cultural assets in a given year. The complementary presentation of collective information on the threat to cultural heritage is essential for a research perspective, in order to develop a strategy for its protection.

Review of Mateusz M. Bieczyński book  "Od zakazu do wolności. Historia prawnej pozytywizacji wolności sztuki" 

ISBN 978-83-65697-34-9

Wydawnictwo Naukowe Silva Rerum,

Uniwersytet Artystyczny w Poznaniu, Poznań 2017

About a book: Restytucja i ochrona dóbr kultury. Zagadnienia prawne

red. Iwona Gredka-Ligarska, Anna Rogacka-Łukasik

ISBN 978-83-65682-76-5

Oficyna Wydawnicza „Humanitas”, Sosnowiec 2017