From Saint Petersburg for Western European Reader – Aleksander This on the Law of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Abstract

Aleksander This (1803–1864), an outstanding Polish lawyer, arrived in Petersburg after the outbreak of the November Uprising. There he got involved in scientific work and in 1838 he published his article entitled Notice sur la coordination des lois provincionales de L’Empire de Russie in a French juridical magazine “Reuve étrangère et française de legislation”. The text presents the problem of codification of provincial laws on the Polish territories taken over by Russia during the annexations by the end of the 18^th century. It includes the description and the assessment of the legislation of the Polish law in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. The author elaborates not only on the systems of laws that were in force and their classifications but also on the attempts to codify the law between the 14^th and 18^th centuries. He gives a detailed description of ordinary law, particular laws and auxiliary laws that functioned in former Poland. This critically evaluated lack of the codification of law, especially the failure of the codification in 1532, the so-called Rectification of Laws and The Collection of Juridical Laws by Andrzej Zamoyski from the years between 1776 and 1780. The advantage of the publication is the introduction of the Western European readers to the problems of the former Polish law.