Civil law (Poland)

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The Civil Law ( Polish prawo cywilne is) an area of the Polish legal system , which governs the legal relations of private individuals among themselves. Private individuals are legal subjects, they can be natural or legal persons .

Historical development

The basis for Polish civil law is the civil code from 1964 (kodeks cywilny) . Throughout the history of the Republic of Poland , traces of various European legal systems can be found in the Civil Code. With independence in 1918 and the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , the Second Polish Republic faced the challenge of creating a unified state. The different legal systems of the individual parts of the country had to be combined into one overall system. For this reason, a codification commission, consisting of professors and practitioners, was set up in 1919 to cope with this task. The legal systems of the German Empire , France , Austria and that of the Russian Tsarist Empire had to be aligned. Despite great efforts and a preliminary codification result from 1933, which among other things provided for a new law of obligations, the members of the committee were not able to present a final result until the outbreak of the Second World War .

A uniform civil law came into force by decrees in 1947. This consisted largely of the results of the Codification Committee. The needs of a socialist state were then to become valid with a draft of the Civil Code from 1949, but this was never passed. In 1956, a new codification commission was created, which essentially consisted of the former members from the 1920s or members of former employees or students of the first commission. The result of this commission was finally the civil code from 1964. In its essential components, this civil code was a modern one and, with the exception of a few socialist passages, could be adopted into the Third Polish Republic after the political change in 1989 . So there is much to suggest that the work of the last commission was aimed at a non-socialist Poland and was thus far ahead of the legal and political conditions. The affiliation to European requirements at the beginning of the 21st century, however, meant that the systematic structure was partially broken and the legal systematic unity was partially no longer given.

Structure of the law

The Polish Civil Code is based on the Pandekt system and thus knows the legal formula of “pulling the brackets” of a general part that precedes the others. It essentially consists of four books:

  • the general part,
  • property law,
  • the law of obligations,
  • inheritance law.

Family law is written as a separate code of law as a result of the Russian-Soviet influence and largely non-property law regulations. According to the prevailing opinion, however, it belongs to the regulatory area of ​​civil law. Due to different circumstances, traditional areas of civil law are fixed in separate laws outside of the Civil Code. For example, housing tenancy law and mortgage law are located outside of the Civil Code. The implementation of the European consumer sales directives in national Polish law also resulted in a separate law. Due to the resulting inconsistency, a new regulation of the Civil Code is often considered. A revision is currently planned for 2013.

Structural features of the civil code

Polish civil law, although one of the most influenced by German law alongside French law, does not recognize the principle of abstraction . This means that under Polish law, a disposition transaction is not effective independently of an obligation transaction . Polish civil law, on the other hand, knows the principles of the principle of unity and the principle of causality according to French law . This means that a disposal transaction always requires an existing effective obligation. The Civil Code is also used as a template in tort law , since here, as in the French legal system, only one general clause, namely Article 415 of the Civil Code, applies. Mainly the legal terms and the methodology have found their way into the German legal community.

literature

Textbooks