Dwa głosy polskich romanistów o prawie czasu wojny
Two Polish Romanists’ Voices on the Subject of Law in Times of War

Summary/Abstract: Roman law scholars seldom leave the subject of their field of interest for contemporary law research studies, especially not for criminal law. Exceptional were views on law in times of World War II expressed by two famous Polish Romanists. The first of them was Rafał Taubenschlag – a famous Polish Romanist and papyrologist who lived in New York over the period 1940–1947. He published there in 1945 a paper Plea of Superior Order. Taubenschlag in his paper argued that the members of the German army could by no means plead obedience to superior orders as justification for their participation in the massacre of unoffending civilians, in the exercise of inhuman cruelties such as torturing and slaughtering of women and children, on the grounds that they regarded those orders as legal and that their superiors did not intend to commit a crime by these acts. They were not bound to obey such orders – he emphasized, and if they did, they did so at their own risk and must be held responsible, as such outrageous acts could not be considered as falling under the heading of military duty. Taubenschlag’s argumentation was used in the Nuremberg trials by Robert H. Jackson – the Chief United States Prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. The other Polish Romanist was Kazimierz Kolańczyk from the University of Poznań, who published, due to his activity in the Institute for Western Affairs in Poznań, a paper German Legislation as a Crime Weapon. In this paper, based on numerous examples, he emphasized that German legislation imposed on Polish territories during World War II was not a manifestation of law but lawlessness and injustice.

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