Historical Evolution of the Definition of a Crime against the State in the European States’ Law and its Influence on the Regulation of these Crimes from the Polish Perspective
Historical Evolution of the Definition of a Crime against the State in the European States’ Law and its Influence on the Regulation of these Crimes from the Polish Perspective

Summary/Abstract: In the hereby article the authors make an attempt to analyse the evolution of the legal definitions of crimes particularly dangerous for a state’s existence called ‘crimes against the state’. Those crimes were prohibited acts, by which a perpetrator intended to remove the state power authorities or change the state system by using force. Those crimes made a group of prohibited acts, distinguished because of the endangered, as a result of the criminal act, legal good which was the state and its system. There was a certain rule relating to those crimes, that an increasing number of the persons brought to justice for committing a crime against the state might be inversely proportional to the social approval of the state system and power. From the legal perspective the definition of the crime against the state developed. For the first time it appeared in the Roman Law, where it was determined as a prohibited act which could be committed only for the Roman state’s loss. The further evolution of the crime against the state took place in the middle-age Sachsenspiegel, where a concept of crimen laesae maiestatis was introduced, which meant a crime directed against the ruler. The crimes against the state, which were attempts to change the state system or authorities exercising the state power by using force, were developing for centuries along with the change of the legal provisions. Related to them legal regulations of the European states’ legislation were reflected in the Polish law, gaining both positive and negative experience in this substance. There always existed a temptation of the rulers to over-interpret provisions sanctioning the criminal liability of the perpetrators of such prohibited acts.

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