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The law in the Kingdom of Poland regulated the use of alternative forms of signature. The files of the courts of peace in Zgierz and Łódźabound in examples of their use. In guardianship documents, we most often find three crosses in lieu of a signature (in applications) or a mention of the illiteracy of the participants in the proceedings (minutes of meetings and resolutions). In the simple police department’s cases, Christians signed with crosses, while Jews drew three circles or signed in Hebrew. In each case, the official (a person witnessing the ‘signature’) attested that the signs were made by a specific person.
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The text in question is a report on the presentation of the edition of the oldest castle court books of Cracow from the early 15th century. The volume was issued by three scholarly institutes, and the presentation took place in the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cracow on December 10, 2019
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This paper is the result of the continuation of ongoing studies on the penal provisions of the Polish Copyright Law of 1926. Some of the research results were presented in the article titled The Penal Provisions of the Polish Copyright Law of 1926. The History of Its Creation –Its General Characteristics –Art. 61 and Its Significance for Further Regulations, which was published in “Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History”(2018, issue 4). This text is a presentation of the analysis of special provisions regulating penal liability for the offences of overprint and plagiarism. Further in the article, the notion of the subjective side is discussed in relation to the offences defined in the Polish Copyright Law of 1926 and also the penal sanctions provided for these offences. In the analysis of the specific problems, emphasis is placed on the course of works on the regulations conducted by the Codification Commission and by the Parliament as well as on the issues related to their application. This approach makes it possible to reconstruct the fundamental legal problems faced by the codifiers and subsequently by the system of justice applying the relevant regulations. The studies concerning the application of copyright law were mainly focused on the judicial practice of the District Court in Kraków. They were based on the court registers and records from the interwar period stored in the National Archives in Kraków. The archival research discovered that the cases concerning the infringement of copyright constituted barely 0.09% of all criminal cases lodged with the District Court in Kraków in the 1930s. In that period, only five persons were definitely sentenced in this respect. Even though there were few criminal cases concerning copyright infringement in the times of the Second Polish Republic, the rulings issued, especially those issued by the Supreme Court, undoubtedly influenced the formation of jurisprudence regarding the interpretation of copyright, and they continue to be cited in pertinent literature up to this day.
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Decretum Gratiani is the most important source of the history of canon law, as the contemporary form of this legal system is not imaginable without it. This work significantly influenced the development of several secular legal institutes, which took place in particular during the period of application of the first pan-European legal system ius commune. Oaths belonged to the most historically important procedural legal means, the contours of which were set to the smallest detail by the canon law scholars of the classical period, mediating their application to the modern times. In spite of the fact that they were on the one hand defined as individual type of ordeals, on the other hand they also played one of the most important tasks in the process of transformation from secular-law ordeals of the older type towards the standards of Roman-canon full proof, including the principle of free evaluation of proofs by the judge. Since the authorities of Sacred Scripture of the Old as well as the New Testament held mostly reserved positions on the oaths, Gracian’s most important task as the first classic was to specify the possibilities of their permitted use in detail. The main goal of the article is to point out the conceptual definition of the institute of the oath in Decretum Gratiani and define the accepted methods of its application in the classical canon law.
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Dne 20. března 2021 se dožil 80 let Jeho Milost, emeritní kanovník a děkan Metropolitní vždy věrné katedrální kapituly u sv. Víta, ThDr. Jiří Svoboda, IC.D., zakládající člen Společnosti pro církevní právo. Je znám nejen po českých zemích a na Slovensku, i v široké cizině, a především v Římě jako úspěšný soudce pražského církevního soudu, ať se tento soud nazýval metropolitním, interdiecézním nebo zase metropolitním. A nadto ho proslavila jeho činnost organizační. Myslím, že Jiří Svoboda právě v této oblasti skvělým způsobem využil svého talentu a obdarování od Pána.
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The formation of the national court instance system began shortly after March 11, 1990. However, recent Soviet heritage, the impulse to turn to the legacy of the First Republic, and the intense dynamics of the events at the beginning of the restoration of independence formed the unique circumstances of this process.The object of this research – the court instance system (instance de recours) – can be defined as a structure of the organization of courts, formed for two purposes: the implementation of justice in a specific case; and the development of a harmonious legal system. The fundamental purpose of the instance system is control over court decisions, which creates conditions for verifying a lower court’s decision, judgment, or ruling in a higher instance.In the pre-occupation period, the work of general jurisdictional courts was based on prescriptive procedural legislation, and before the loss of independence, the first republic had a three-instance, fourtiered court system formed by the judicial reform implemented in 1933.On June 15, 1940, the evolution of the legal system of the First Republic of Lithuania was interrupted by an act of external aggression. The purpose and place of the court in the system of government changed, and the Soviet model of the organization of courts of first instance and cassation instance came into force.The half-century-long Soviet occupation kept both the model of the judicial system and the totality of its operating principles essentially unchanged. Throughout this period, the suppression, opposition, and annihilation of historical memory resulted in the heritage or principles of the Western European tradition becoming largely unknown in the judicial system.On the day of restoration of independence, Lithuania decided to accept Soviet-era law until the relevant laws were adopted. It was understood that would not be possible to quickly create a qualitatively new model of the legal system.After the restoration of independence, it was recognized that changes in the instance system must be in line with the traditions of democratic European states.On January 30, 1991, a working group was formally set up to prepare the Law on the Judiciary and the Status of Judges. Informally, however, work on this issue between researchers and practitioners had begun much earlier. It was decided to choose the 1933 judicial organization as the starting point for the reform of the judicial system.On February 6, 1992, the new Law on Courts was adopted. The new court instance system repeated Lithuania’s interwar experience. In the new model, first instance cases are divided between two courts, and the appellate instance is also concentrated in two appellate courts. The Supreme Court of Lithuania is provided as an exclusive cassation instance.The period from 1990–1992 was only the first step in Lithuania’s implementation of the new court instance system.
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The idea of communism contained the promise that we simply needed to abolish private property, make the state the entity that manages the means of production in a centralized manner, and the death of the state would automatically follow. Yet, already the 19th century, the anarchists, especially Mikhail A. Bakunin, warned that the attempt to implement this project must end in all-encompassing despotism. However, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels remained committed to their communist ideals throughout their whole life, because the semi-religious utopian fantasies prevailed in them over the strenuous efforts of researchers trying to understand human history. In such a situation, the founders of Marxism would unknowingly articulate the ideological justification for the interests of a caste of professional revolutionaries, the future rulers of the communist utopia, in this way contributing to the establishment of a new ruling class in the socialist state.
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The present text aims to draw attention to the hitherto unanalysed matter of the evaluation of Michał Staszków’s scientific work, carried out by Kazimierz Kolańczyk, a scholar from Poznań specialising in Roman law. The evaluation of Michał Staszków’s efforts to obtain the title of associate professor, previously unanalysed and unpublished, is an interesting source of information as to the scientific perception of this Katowice-based scientist.
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History of law is one of the disciplines of legal science. Studying the history of law (especially the Polish one) was significant during the partitions, because it emphasized national identity. At that time, in the19th century, the leading research centre was the University of Cracow. It was there that the first legal and historical subjects were taught, which is why the first didactic models were developed at these universities. In the 20th century, to meet the needs of that times, many attempts were made to change the education system. Especially memorable seems to be the reform of 1975, which was not approved by the academic community. After over 40 years, some universities in Poland are still following the assumptions of that model.
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In the period from 1968 till 2018, the study of Roman law at the University of Silesia in Katowice was carried out, among others, by Michał Staszków and Edward Szymoszek. These two scholars were not only the first lecturers of this subject at the Faculty of Law and Administration in Katowice, but also during their academic careers, they contributed to the expansion of knowledge in this area of law.In the field of Roman law, Michał Staszków researched Roman litigation process, and his most popular works on this subject are the articles Vindicta, Vindex and the monographic work “Vim dicere. Studies on the origins of the Roman litigation process” [Studia nad genezą procesu rzymskiego]. As for the second of the aforementioned scholars — Edward Szymoszek, we can state, on the basis of his works, that the object of his interest was the school of glossators and Roman litigation process, with the emphasis on the status of a judge.During the fifty years of the Faculty of Law and Administration in Katowice, the two Roman law experts undoubtedly exerted influence on the development of Roman law. They were connected not only by the fact that they taught Roman law, but also by their interests. Later in his career, Edward Szymoszek made an insightful analysis of the works of Michał Staszków, and the work of his predecessor influenced the direction of his later research in the field of litigation.
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In the article, published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the St. Vitus Day Constitution, the author deals with one of the key institutes of this document – freedom of the press. Based on discussions in the Constitutional Committee and the plenum of the Constituent Assembly, he concludes that the provisions of the St. Vitus Day Constitution on the press were created by the autocratization of certain provisions of the Constitution of Serbia of 1903. The article especially analyzes the restrictions of the press introduced by the transitional orders of the St. Vitus Day Constitution, through circumventing censorship and incrimination of “religious or tribal discord or hatred against the state”.
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Adopted in the 1922–1926 legislature, the Constitution of 1923 was indispensable for the project of legislative unification of Romania. Its norms impose unique fundamental principles and rules for the entire national legal system: the principle of national sovereignty; the principle of legality and supremacy of the Constitution; the interests of the social community may take precedence over individual interests in the matter of property right. The regulation of some unique institutions for the entire Romanian State ensures the unitary exercise of constitutional competences, and the regulated rights for all Romanians ensure a unique foundation of freedom and equality.Other provisions have a strong unifying role and each provide a point of constitutional support for future legislation. The supremacy of the constitutional norms in the system of legal norms, supported by the case law of the unique supreme court, but also the beneficial psychological effect determined by the constitutional unification complete the picture of the impact of the constitutional norms from 1923.
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The academic character of the article is connected with the attempt to answer the question asked in the title: Utopia without the law – is it possible? The theoretical arguments provided by the author lead to an affirmative answer to this question and allow for formulating the following thesis: there is no utopia without the law. The law is not only present in utopias, both positive and negative ones (anti-utopias and dystopias) but also, to a great extent, determines their existence and functioning. As a result, it links utopian thinking to reality. Any answer to this question is possible and justifiable in the academic discourse. According to the author of this article not only the law is present in the utopia but the law in the utopia must exist. The essence of the law in utopias is justice, but there is not justice in utopias without wisdom. The Bible, Roman law and philosophical and legal reflection were the sources of an approach to law for the creators of utopia. Referring to the views of such thinkers as: Plato, Immanuel Kant, Rudolf von Ihering, Gustav Radbruch, Karl R. Popper, Bronisław Baczko, the author states that the law is an integral part of both worlds: the utopian world and real world. So, there is not utopia without the law as an idea of jusctice, implemented into the social life of the people who are intelligent beings.
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Since the second half of the 19th century, there are ceaseless discussions about comparative law. They were particularly present among the legal methodologists and historicists, both on the East and the West. What is the comparative law: scientific discipline or a legal method? This work does not hold the ambition to judge neither of the opposed sides. Our aim is to present several remarks on the comparative law, that could be beneficial to those delving in comparative legal history. Medieval Muslim legal experts such as Ibn Rush left their contribution in the development of the comparative law and have likely influenced European legal experts to explore different legal traditions themselves. The benefit in researching the comparative law is not disputed by experts. The discission centered around whether this is a scientific discipline or legal method will remain present. However, this discussion is not harmful, because the results we obtain from comparative legal research are important.
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In early March 1919 the government of Ignacy Paderewski established the office of General Delegate of the Government for Galicia. This ended a stage of provisional management of the post-Austrian district, which resulted from political and systemic changes in the first months of the independent Polish state’s existence. New structures of authority, such as the Polish Liquidation Commission or the Ruling Commission, emerged in opposition to the Polish administration of Austrian times and were based on political and civic rather than professional factors. This complicated the situation so much that the administration of Małopolska by the government in Warsaw became difficult. The appointment of Kazimierz Gałecki as the General Delegate of the Government for Galicia and placing the official structures from the Austrian times at his disposal stabilised administrative relations in the lands of former Galicia, strengthening the authority of the reborn Polish state.
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In the 1660s and 1670s, the Senate of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth consisted of between 146 and 150 members. Appointments to senatorial offices could only be made by the King, and some of them took place during Sejm sessions. There were three types of nominations for senatorial offices. The first concerned those who entered the Senate. The second referred to those who sat in the Senate and who advanced in the senatorial hierarchy. The third referred to senators who were additionally granted a second senatorial office. During the 1661–1679 Sejm sessions discussed here, senatorial appointments were usually announced right at the beginning of the session, just after the King’s proposal or the senators’ votes, but many times such decisions were also taken at the end of the Sejm. Most senatorial appointments were made at the coronation Sejm, which inaugurated the proper reign of the King-elect (the Sejms of 1669 and 1676). At the Sejm sessions discussed here, which were held in the 1660s and 1670s, 113 people were nominated for senatorial offices.
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The origins of the modern Polish system of notaries date back to the period of the Polish Second Republic. At the end of World War I, the institution of notaries in Polish lands was heterogeneous. There were three separate notary organizations, which regulated differently the systemic position, tasks and functions of the notary. The rebirth of the Polish State brought the issue of unification of the system of notaries. Works on this ground-breaking task took place for several years and ended with the creation of the Law on Notaries of 27 October 1933. The article is intended to precisely determine the systemic position of the notary under the first Polish Law on Notaries. Article 1 of the Regulation defined notary as a public functionary appointed to draw up acts and documents to which the parties were obliged or wanted to give the public attestation and to carry out other acts as entrusted to him by law. Attempts to define the concept of a public official revealed numerous terminological problems and generated the need to conduct research on the issue of the notary’s position both in terms of scholarly reflection and dogmatic terms. In order to determine the systemic position of the notary, the article presents a detailed analysis of the term “public functionary” used in Article 1 of the Law on Notaries, views of the most eminent representatives of legal science in Poland on this subject and the scope of activities of the notary. The doubts and terminological difficulties identified in the course of these activities led to a deeper analysis of the provisions of Section I of the Law on Notaries, entitled “System of Notaries” (provisions of Chapters I–III) and of the case law. However, the attempt undertaken in the article to clearly define the position of the notary under the first Polish Law on Notaries did not bring a fully satisfactory result. The analysis of the position of the notary in the light of the Law on Notaries of 1933 indicates that there are serious difficulties in defining it precisely, both among the scholars in the field and the judicature. To fully define it, a closer analysis of the provisions of the Law on Notaries concerning the supervision of notaries, disciplinary and compensation liability of notaries, the professional self-government of notaries and the rules of preparation for the profession of notary was necessary. These issues have a significant impact on the final shape of the notary’s position within the legal system. Due to editorial limitations, these issues will be addressed in the second part of this article, along with final conclusions.
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This study presents the different manuscript or published sources of law that were referred to in the course of litigation in the Transylvanian central court of law, the Royal/Voivodal/Princely Table (Tabula, Curia) and its court of appeal, the court of personal presence in the second half of the 16th century. Based on the analyzed archival sources – mainly the various allegationes made by the lawyers – one can conclude that different sources provided the grounds that were frequently given for the decisions of the court. The data presented shows that besides the Tripartitum, which was mostly referred to, the lawyers used during the litigations the laws of the Hungarian Kingdom, the Decreta of the Transylvanian diets and the Table even judged some cases according to its own custom.
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