No. 1 (48)

Adoption in Art. 44 section 3 of the Act of 2011 on the National Council of the Judiciary that the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure on cassation appeals shall apply to proceedings before the Supreme Court in cases involving appeals against decisions of the Council implies the method of determining the limits of the Supreme Court's examination of a case initiated by an appeal of a party to the proceedings. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in cases involving appeals against the decisions of the National Council of the Judiciary on the appointment of judges includes, first of all, the examination of the inconsistency of the decision with the law.

Although the Supreme Court does not have the authority to examine the merits of candidates for judicial office, nor to decide which of them should be submitted to the President of the Republic of Poland with an application for appointment as a judge, the subject of the procedure for evaluating a candidate and submitting an application for his appointment as a judge is a matter within the meaning of Article 45(1) of the Constitution and is therefore subject to judicial review to the extent appropriate to this type of case, i.e. in terms of legality and compliance with the applicable legal procedures.

According to Recital 48 of Directive 2019/770, facts leading to a lack of compliance with requirements provided for by the GDPR may constitute a lack of conformity of the digital content or digital service with the contract. The paper aims to clarify the meaning of the above concept. It starts with presenting the origins of the solution, followed by examples of its application in the case of subjective and objective non-conformity. Finally, its impact on the relationship between businesses and consumers is considered. In particular, it analyses when the breach of the GDPR can constitute a premise for the non-conformity of digital content or services with the contract and how such a breach will be addressed by remedies provided for in the sales law. The main hypothesis of the paper is that the remedies specific to sales law cannot always be applied directly to protect against breaches caused by non-compliance with the GDPR. If they are to protect consumer rights when digital content or services are in play, which is the purpose of Directive 2019/770, their interpretation must consider the specificity of GDPR. In this context, the paper considers to what extent the body of doctrine and case law on non-conformity, developed on the grounds of the sales law, can be applied to contracts for digital content and services. Finally, the paper addresses the problem of the so-called hybridization of public and private law. It indicates a new dimension of the synergy of these two fields of law in the context of the mutual influence of consumer law and personal data protection law.

In the Polish legal system, a military will is a special form of will. Its validity is subject to the fulfillment of several formal conditions, including subjective and temporal conditions, which are generally regulated by Article 954 of the Civil Code. The legal delegation provided for in this article was implemented by the decree of the Minister of National Defence of January 30, 1965, which introduced four forms of military wills. However, the regulations adopted more than half a century ago do not meet the needs of modern society. For this reason, a government project has recently been prepared to amend the law of succession in order to respond to current social needs and to eliminate or at least reduce the risk of negative events in the legal system. A critical assessment of this project is the subject of this study.

The study concerns the analysis and juridical interpretation of the historically shaped normative solutions of the warranty for latent physical defects of animals. Analysis was conducted in selected mixed legal systems of Scots law and legal systems of Louisiana, Quebec, and South Africa. In historical and comparative terms, accurate and unfavorable attempts at legal response to the problem of diseases in live animals have been demonstrated. Hybridization schemes of civil law, which may be adopted in the future, were indicated.

The death of a conceived child may be the result of forbidden acts which, although not intended to cause the unlawful termination of a pregnancy, have the effect of doing so. These are both intentional and unintentional crimes. With regard to the former, the protection of unborn children is incomplete, and with regard to the latter, it is not provided for at all. The purpose of this article is to reflect on this issue and to point out areas where these deficiencies are particularly visible. The article is original, although it is based on the previous achievements of criminal law doctrine in this area. It has a significant cognitive value for dogmatics and legal practice.

The author's aim is to answer the question in which cases the court in executive proceedings is obliged to consult expert psychiatrists due to doubts about the sanity of the convicted person. The article begins by defining the scope of the above-mentioned doubts as a prerequisite for obligatory defense in executive proceedings. Then the article discusses the opinion of expert psychiatrists given at the earlier stages of the case and its influence on the compulsory defense at the final stage of the criminal trial. Considerations on the limitation of the judicial independence of a court in executive proceedings complete the discussion.

Security is an ambiguous concept that depends on the methodology used in a particular field of science. The concept of security is used in many areas of social life, because it is extremely broad in meaning; it is often found in legal acts of various importance. Even in the regulations of the Polish criminal law, a specific legal good has been mentioned: public safety. This category of security, which refers to all citizens of the state, is also a legal good protected by Polish criminal law. However, the broad scope of the concept of „general safety” may lead to an excessive freedom of interpretation, which could be considered as an impermissible extension of the interpretation at the level of analysis of criminal law provisions. This article focuses on the analysis of the concept of general safety in order to reconstruct the material scope of the offense under Article 165 § 1.1 of the Penal Code.

In the 16th century, the evidence procedure developed as a part of the land court procedure in force in Poland. Previously developed in a customary way, mainly based on the practice of courts from Małopolska, the land criminal procedure gradually developed under the influence of parliamentary constitutions. Among the extensive plans for the improvement of the law in force in Poland, the most urgent was the reform of the judicial procedure, which directly affected the functioning of the judiciary. Within the framework of this reform, it was only possible to codify the law of criminal procedure by issuing the formula processus in 1523. It was the only successful attempt to codify and unify the law in the Polish Noble Republic. As a result of the development of criminal procedure in the 16th century, there was a change in the hierarchy of evidence. Gradually, the oath of the parties lost its importance and various forms of official certificates (inspection, documents) gained in importance. At the end of this period, the institution of the scrutinium was developed. In the course of time it became one of the most important institutions for obtaining evidence within the Polish land proceedings. Some elements increased the inquisitorial character of the land court in order to ensure the efficiency of the proceedings.

The Danish Code (Danske Lov) of King Christian V of 1683 is considered by many historians of law and political systems to be the greatest and most enduring work of the Danish absolute monarchy. In many ways, it was ahead of its time, introducing principles that would not be popularized on our continent until the codifications of the Age of Enlightenment, or perhaps even later. Among the progressive elements contained in the procedural law of the DL are, in particular, the considerable shortening and acceleration of proceedings and the imposition of a duty on royal officials to act in the absence of a complaint from a qualified accuser for offenses of a public nature. Moreover, the undoubtedly innovative nature of many of its provisions led to the development of the institution of legal representation and the provision of legal assistance by deputies and attorneys (plenipotentiaries) for those who could not assert and defend their rights themselves. In addition, the Code introduced significant changes in the field of evidence compared to the previous legal system, essentially breaking with the legal theory of evidence. Thanks to its provisions, preventive measures were further developed and changes were introduced regarding the enforcement of judgments and appeals to higher courts.

During World War II, the Polish Code of Criminal Procedure of 1928 was formally enforced by the General Government. However, its scope was significantly limited. Its provisions were used by the judiciary of the Polish Underground State, but to a minimal extent. German courts did not apply it. Polish (non-German) courts used it, but only when the court was considering a criminal case against a person of non-German nationality, and only when the German prosecutor did not transfer the case to the jurisdiction of a German court. Several million people of nationalities other than German lived in the General Government: Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and others. Most of the criminal cases against such persons, if they were brought, were conducted in Polish courts, which, unlike German courts, followed rational rules of procedure and gave the accused a chance for a fair trial. These cases were used in the Polish Code of Criminal Procedure of 1928.

In 1677, a new organization of the judiciary was introduced in the part of Livonia (the Duchy of Livonia) dependent on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The land court (sąd ziemski) and castle court (sąd grodzki) established at that time were to function on the model of their Polish-Lithuanian counterparts. The Livonian castle court sat in the castle in Dyneburg, and its work was headed by the castle starost (starosta), who was subordinate to the castle substarost (podstarosta), the judge, and the notary. The chancellery was run by the regent. In 1765 two more judges were added. During the reign of Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski, the Castle Court held two sessions a year (in August and December).  The legal basis of its jurisdiction was the III Statute of Lithuania, and any appeals against its decisions were submitted to the Crown Court. The judicial documents were written in Polish. In 1772 the Duchy of Livonia was annexed to the Russian Empire.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functioning of the International Health Regulations (IHR) Review Committees of the World Health Organization. It attempts to analyze the operation of these committees in order to answer the questions of whether they are performing their functions properly and whether it would be possible to improve their operation. Subsequent chapters discuss the operating rules, legal status, and powers of these committees, as well as their activities to date and their impact (i.e., reports). In the conclusions, the author addresses the question of the effectiveness of the IHR Review Committees and then suggests what could be changed.

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems and their application in the creative industries makes it a very important issue to evaluate the creations generated by such systems from a copyright perspective. In this paper, I outline how generative AI systems work using the MidJourney platform as an example. Understanding how such tools are used, in terms of how the user uses them rather than what technology is behind them, allows them to be assessed from the perspective of the content of copyright law and the statements of doctrine. The paper presents the generally dominant idea that the creations of generative AI are not protectable because humans do not create them, and position is critical to these views.