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Review of: Anna Sucheni-Grabowska "Wolność i prawo w staropolskiej koncepcji państwa"; Muzeum Historii Polski, Warsaw 2009, 272 pages; by: Diana Maksimiuk
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Review of: "Droit naturel: relancer l’histoire?; Under the direction of Louis-Léon Christians, François Coppens, Xavier Dijon, Paul Favraux, Gaëlle Fiasse, Jean-Michel Longneaux et Muriel Ruol; Preface by Catherine Labrusse, postface by Jean-Marc Ferry; Collection: „Droit et Religion” 2; by: Karol Kuźmicz
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Review of: George Mousourakis "A Legal History of Rome"; London–New York 2007, 282 pages; by: Krzysztof Szczygielski
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Review of: "Komunistické právo v Československu. Kapitoly z dĕjin bezpráví"; ed.Michal Bobek, Pavel Molek, Vojtĕch Šimíček; Publisher. Masaryk University, Brno 2009, 1006 pages; by: Piotr Fiedorczyk
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Legal history in Poland is imperiled by a few threats. One of them is a model of the university education, promoted by the heads of faculties, which is devoted to strictly legal subjects. It may happen, that historical subjects will be eliminated or vastly limited in the course of the implementation of this model. Such kind of pressure inclines legal historians to emphasize their utility to contemporary legal science. However, it is worth noticing, that there are different dangers that lie in wait for Roman law and for Polish legal history. Basing instruction upon incomplete sources in showing a distant genesis of contemporary legal institutions causes an excessive simplification, which is a serious threat to the reliability of scientific research. The Polish legal history researcher will be helpful to a specialist of contemporary law only occasionally and in most of those rare cases his research will be used to point out the birth of a certain legal institution in Polish law. Another threat to Polish legal history is an intensive interest in mostly recent history. Although, after years of censorship in the state of real socialism, this situation is intelligible, as it resulted in abandoning the research of old-Polish times, nowadays conducted by only a few scholars. As far as the group of Romanists is concerned, they tend to indicate the Roman roots of almost all past, present and future legal institutions. However, this is cannot be done when applying all rigors of scientific research. A drop of the scientific level of publications may be observed as well. Authors do not investigate sources of the practice of the law, the use of legal history literature is insufficient and the publications of historians of other specializations are used only to a minimal degree. Legal historians in Poland have to deal with these main problems, if they hope for the further development of their discipline.
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The Civil War started on Friday, 12 April 1861 with an attack of the Confederate artillery on federal Fort Sumter (Charleston, South Carolina). The conflict ended on 9 April 1865 as a result of the surrender of the main army of the South under General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. It was a total war. Almost 4 million men were mobilised on both sides of the conflict. In the four years of warfare almost 620,000 human lives were lost (more than in all other wars conducted by the US put together). During the Civil War, prisoners of war were imprisoned in at least 223 camps. The majority of them were temporary. On the other hand, more than 90% of prisoners of war were detained in the twenty biggest camps and the highest numbers of deaths were recorded there. In this article I present cases of: war crimes committed on prisoners of war (the Fort Pillow Massacre, Kinston Massacre, etc.) and reprisals against them (Privateers Case, Kilpatrick--Dahlgren Raid) and taking hostages (Corbin-McGraw Case, Immortal Six Hundred).
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The article presented deals with legal, economic and historical aspects of Polish cheques. The study is divided into five parts. Three of them concern a general issue of codification and unification of law in reborn Poland after the 1st World War, the international unification of cheques law, as well as they give an outline of form and nature of a cheque (or check in American English) as a type of bill of exchange, and depict various cheque’s functions, such as payment, currency, guarnantee and credit ones. The fourth part comprise three sections: the state of cheques law at the first period of the Second Republic of Poland (1918–1924); the Polish cheques law – a decree passed by the President of the Republic of Poland (14th November 1924), and finally the Act of Cheques Law – a bill enacted by the Polish Parliament (28th April 1936). The activity of the Polish Commission of Codification is regarded as the most important for legislative results in this branch of law. The attempt of international simplification and unification of law relating to cheques took place in Geneva (1931). On 19 March 1931 three conventions concerning this matter were signed: 1) the Convention providing a Uniform Law for Cheques (with two annexes and a protocol); 2) the Convention for the Settlement of Certain Conflicts of Laws in connection with Cheques (with a protocol); 3) the Convention on the Stamp Laws in connection with Cheques (and a protocol). Poland is of part these conventions and the Polish Cheques Law of April 28, since 1936 still is in force without essential changes, is consistent with these regulations.
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The Federal Reserve System (the Fed) has been the central bank of the United States since it was created in 1913. The key reason why Congress created the Federal Reserve System was to ensure that a central bank would be available to provide monetary resources in sufficient objective to avert potential banking and financial panics. Another congressional objective was to provide an institution that could centralize the clearing of payments across the nation. Congress also desired the government to have a central depository for its funds. A key defect of the original Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was that it did not spell out the lines of authority for Fed policy – making. Although the legislation gave the Federal Reserve Board supervisory functions within the system, it did not give the Board the power to dictate policies to the individual Federal Reserve Banks. At best, the Board could try to muster efforts for system wide coordination. Such efforts were not always successful, and much of the time the Federal Reserve Banks conducted their own regional policies. This caused internal dissension within the Fed crash and the subsequent financial panics. By 1933 a third of all the commercial banks in the United States had failed. Furthermore, the quantity of money also had declined by about a third. The banking crisis reinforced a business downturn, and the economic decline reinforced the financial collapse. The nation had fallen into what we now call the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the area of money and banking arrangements, Congress responded to the Great Depression the Banking Act of 1935. In many respects this legislation really amounted to a new Federal Reserve Act, because it fundamentally restructured the Federal Reserve System. It created new offices with clearly defined responsibilities, and it centered the Fed’s powers within the Board of Governors and its chair. Finally, the Banking Act of 1935 established the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which is composed of the seven governors and five of the twelve Federal Reserve Bank presidents, and excluded the Treasury secretary and the comptroller of the currency from Board governor positions.
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The act of 15 Dec. 1951 on petty offenses jurisdiction has introduced the socialist model into this branch of law. It was based on so called socialization and democratization of jurisdiction. The cases were decided by collective organs and the decisions were supposed to have an educational character. The punishment of arrest was abolished and two new punishments were introduced: so called corrective labor and admonition. The act regulated the procedure in only petty offenses cases, because petty offenses were regulated by acts dating from the pre-war period. The state of legal uncertainty and the superficial character of the 1951 act led to many unlawful decisions being taken by the boards judging petty offenses. The members of these boards usually had no legal education. This state was criticized and in 1955 the Ministry of Internal Affairs began working on a new codification of the petty offenses law. The first draft was ready in 1956, when major political changes were taking place. It consisted of two parts: the first one regulated the petty offenses law, the second one regulated procedural norms. The draft was satisfactory. It was based on the principle of the educational role of law. The monetary penalties were moderate. The liberal character of the draft caused the its rejection in 1957. Władysław Gomułka, the leader of the communist party, insisted on imposing severe repression against hooligans. That is why the amendment of the 1951 act, passed in 1958, was much more repressive.
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The sessions of the 9th Extraordinary Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) was preceded by a profound public critique of both the structures and the activity of the judiciary and administration of justice. The corporations of lawyers demanded to strengthen the independence of the judiciary. They demanded to abolish the regulations on the so called “warranty” of socialist justice and to abolish the term of office in the Supreme Court. The Party, however, had no intention of changing and getting rid of legal regulations that allowed them to control the sphere of the judiciary. In the programme presented at the congress, the Central Committee of the PUWP emphasized the need to strengthen the existing structures of the socialist system of justice that in their opinion ensured the ‘independence’ of the judiciary. This approach of the PUWP towards the system of justice was rejected by a group of delegates who criticized the programme presented by the Central Committee at a meeting of a task group. They pointed out the need for tangible legal changes in the system administration of justice as postulated by the corporations of lawyers. These views were nonetheless found to be anti-socialist, and were not included in the final text of the congress resolution, which merely reiterated the theses set forth in the Central Committee’s programme statement.
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Several traditional rules regarding a choice of law were created by F. C. von Savigny andP. S. Mancini. They are also responsible for their further application in the civil law countries. For the first time in our times all the nations are participating in the creation of global village and the new ius gentium. These activities cause a couple of questions to be answered: if the nowadays changes in private international law have revolutionary or evolutionary character or maybe if the choice of law rules are passé?
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The resolution published below has replaced earlier resolutions from 1945 and 1946. They were published in the previous volume of “Miscellanea Historico-Iuridica”. Important changes were introduced by the resolution. The most significant was that the Ministry of Justice was no longer a legislative centre of the Ministry Council and the functions were transferred to the Office of the Prime Minister. This change is long-lasting, since even now the Office is responsible for the internal legislative procedure in the Ministry. The resolution shows that the legislative process (especially process of preparing bill for the Sejm to pass) was more and more complicated.
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The main purpose of the text was to raise a few objections about the handbook of D. Mróz. It has been underlined that the preponderance of mistakes disqualifies this book as a recommended one for the students. A student who refuses to repeat some parts of Roman law with this publication will not be as much disappointed as that who followed the view of Roman law presented by the author. D. Mróz should have had to put more emphasis on preparing her questions and cases in a more meticulous way. It is unthinkable that a student has to decide which answer is correct when more than one seems to be proper. Furthermore, the variety of questions and cases referring to property law and the law of obligation seems to be insufficient. It is in vain to look for a rule superficies solo cedit or nemo plus iuris in alium transferre potest, quam ipse haberet. An inquisitive student will be disappointed by a quantity of questions concerning toe.g. obligations ex delicto. This publication requires a thorough amendments, as well a review by a competent Romanist. When the underlined mistakes are eliminated by the author, the book will be acceptable.
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Review of: Anna Machnikowska "Prawo własności w Polsce w latach 1944–1981. Studium historycznoprawne"; Publisher University of Gdansk, Gdańsk 2010, 626 pages; by: Paweł Cholewka
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Publications; Participation in scientific conferences; Human resources;
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The jurist Cassius is believed to be the author of the brocard Vim vi repellere licet . However, in Cicero’s speeches the are many fragments concerning repelling force by force. It therefore seems that it might have been him who had first made the rule common, maybe as vim vi depellere licet. The context in which the orator placed it, implied restoring order in the state, in which violence ruled. Cicero claimed that – in order for the law to prevail – it was first necessary to fight force with force. Only later was the rule transferred by the jurist into private law.
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From the moment of the creation of a state on the territories of Belarus, the system of taxation was also developing. At first it was quite primitive, based on the size of the population. Later on, when social and economic relations became more developed, new forms of taxation, based on the value of land, likewise developed.In the 10-12th centuries, the taxes were collected from the territories. The treasury of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania consisted of pecuniary and non-pecuniary (natural) taxes. Since the beginning of the 17th century, more than 30 different taxes had existed. Some of the present taxes have roots in this old system.The feature of this system is that it had an individual character. There were many reductions established, so that one may even talk about a – whole system of tax reductions.
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As is the case in the majority of modern states, the formation of local management and self- management in Belarus is an inevitable process. During the economic and political reforms required for this purpose, there are necessary preconditions. Historically, local government has passed through a long and difficult process of development in Belarus.In working out modern concepts of local government, it is necessary to consider the evolution of the machinery of government and the historical development of most legal regulations of mutual relations between the state as a whole and its parts. Actually, the first forms of self-management in its modern understanding began to arise in the territory of modern Byelorussia since the XIVth century. In the present legal and historical scientific literature, there was no uniform representation about the stages of formation of local governments in the territory of Belarus. It is represented that these or any other processes are always conditional; nevertheless, in this work, one of the variants of classification and a periodization of the process of formation and the development of local management and self-management in the territory of Belarus is offered.
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