The article discusses changes in the fundamental legal principles which took place in Central and Easter European countries during the period of system transformation of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, presented from the perspective of Polish experience. It encompasses an analysis of the changes which were made in this period in the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic of 1952 and selected acts. The authors have studied legislative materials of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland of the 10th term (the so-called Contract Sejm elected in the aftermath of the Round Table Agreement, which paved the way to democratic changes in Poland) which amended the aforementioned acts. It is the authors' belief that the legislative materials are a valuable source of information on the legislative intent as they make it possible to identify the underlying objectives behind the changes made as well as the meaning the legislator intended to attribute to the new provisions. The research revealed that during the period of system transformation, new provisions were introduced to the Polish law which led to the establishment of new legal principles fundamental for the system (e.g. the democratic state under the rule of law principle); some provisions were amended and the terms used therein were reformulated so as to correspond to the goals of the state post-Communist transformation (e.g. the principle of the people's rule of law was transformed into the principle of the rule of law) while the other provisions, although left in their then-current wording, over the course of time, received a new meaning (e.g. the principle which requires that civil law relationships should take account of the rules of social coexistence). The authors believe the paper can be an interesting source of information for readers in the Czech Republic, which just like Poland, after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, was faced with challenges related to changing the jurisprudence in the aftermath of the system transformation.

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Przedmiotem opracowania przygotowanego 100 rocznicę urodzin Profesora Kazimierza Opałka jest problematyka praworządności w opublikowanych przezeń pracach. W toku prowadzonych rozważań poddano analizie charakterystyki praworządności, podziały praworządności oraz problem gwarancji praworządności, tak jak one były rozumiane przez Opałka. Szczególną uwagę zwrócono na podjęty przezeń problem ograniczenia konstytucyjnych praw i wolności na mocy przepisów rangi ustawowej. Nadto porównano stanowisko teoretycznoprawne Kazimierza Opałka z poglądami Józefa Nowackiego. Podkreślono, że w pracach tych autorów można znaleźć zarówno miejsca wspólne, ale i pewne istotne różnice. Na zakończenie wskazano, że Opałek już w latach pięćdziesiątych XX w., podejmując problem sporu o pojęcie praworządności, odnosił prowadzone analizy do koncepcji niemieckich oraz angielskich. Przeprowadzone przezeń analizy pojęciowe pomimo upływu czasu nie straciły swojej aktualności, a przyszłe pokolenia naukowców będą przez lata do nich powracać.

The aim of this paper is to outline the general oversight of the concept of law in Leon Petrażycki’s legal theory. On the example of the principles of law, an attempt was made to answer the question, what Petrażycki’s theory proposes to modern science. In the first part of the presentation, the Author presented the current state of theoretical knowledge in the field of principles of law. The attention was paid to the problem of various characteristics of legal principles. In further considerations, an attempt was made to answer the question about adoption of models proposed by Petrażycki in the contemporary theoretical discourse. The summary presents general conclusions of the paper.

The present paper aims to present an outline of the views of the Polish legal theorist Józef Nowacki (1923–2005). The claim put forward is that Nowacki was the chief representative of Hans Kelsen’s normativism in Polish legal theory. The paper begins with a short historical sketch presenting the reception of Hans Kelsen’s views in Polish jurisprudence, noting that in the post-war period the communist authorities believed that normativism was at odds with the then prevailing system of actually existing socialism. Drawing inspiration from German-speaking authors, Nowacki rejected the ideology prevailing in Poland at that time and became a staunch advocate of the normativist stance, in particular with regard to the theory of the legal system. The second part of the paper discusses Nowacki’s views regarding the concept of the rule of law, and the third and last part presents Nowacki’s critique of the case-law of the Polish Constitutional Court.