Początki wymiaru sprawiedliwości na Białostocczyźnie w 1919 r. w świetle wileńskich archiwaliów
The beginnings of the justice in the Białystok region in 1919 in the light of Vilnius archives

Summary/Abstract: The creation of the justice system in Poland after it regained its independence in 1918 is an issue which does not attract too much interest from researchers. The main problem lies in the lack of historical sources on the subject. This is particularly evident with regard to the Eastern Lands of the Second Polish Republic as the archival materials concerting those lands were either destroyed during World War II, or if they were not, they are not easily accessible today. The judicial history of the Białystok region in the interwar period is not well known precisely because of the lack of sources. To date, the attempts to describe it have been based solely on press releases – mainly from the local newspaper 'Dziennik Białostocki' - and on normative acts published in government gazettes issued by the state authorities. Memoirs have also been consulted, but there are not many of them either. As it turns out, the Lithuanian Central State Archives in Vilnius has valuable materials on the beginnings of Polish judiciary in Białystok from the period of March 1919 to June 1919. Thanks to these few documents, we can learn not only about the difficult process of creating the local judiciary, but also about the first months of its operation and the names of the people who participated in it. Due to the fact that these archives are not easily accessible and no one has reached them before, some of them (showing case-law figures) have been published as material for future research.

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