As there exists the genealogy of humankind, so too exists the genealogy of law. The lineage of Polish law is highly specific, in that its existence can only be traced back to 1918. Though this assertion by itself tells only part of the story, because, uniquely in Europe, following 123 years of foreign domination, five distinct notindigenous legal systems have been imposed on the territory of the modem state of Poland. 1918 marked merely the beginning of the arduous process
of integrating those various systems, which was considered complete not sooner than in 1946 and most certainly with the codification of 1964.
The goal of the current research project is to verify the historical sources of the entire Polish law of obligations, a branch of the law unified and codified
in the period 1933-1964, particularly by demonstrating the relationship between Polish law and laws that were in force during the period of the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939) as a consequence of the late 18′ Century partitioning of Poland, namely Austrian, German, Russian and French laws. The research will build
on existing sources, such as from the pre-1939 Codification Commission, whose work was in turn inspired by, among others, Swiss law and the Corpus iuris civilis
of Roman law as well.
The research project will analyse in full the protocols of the Codification Commission, which were subsequently utilised in the development of the Civil Code
of the Polish People’s Republic, which added to, rather than replaced, the pre-war codification, in particular with regards to the Code of Obligations of 1933
and other laws of foreign origin that were in force in Poland at the time. As a result, this research project should be in a position to conclude to what extent
the Polish legal system has merely imported its legal rules or if it can also be said to have created a nowel body of legal thought. Evidence in favour of the latter includes the fact that the members of the pre-1939 Codification Commission were, by necessity, legal comparatists, given their pre-1918 professional experiences in different legal jurisdictions. The circumstances of the early development of Polish pfivate law provides the explanation as to why a historical-comparative approach in exploring the sources of the Polish Law of Obligations is the most suitable.
There are numerous additional reasons for justifying a project of this nature. The first is that the authors of the Code of Obligations had not intended to favour
and adopt the rules and principles of any one particular legal system existing at that time, but rather they had explicitly declared their determination to create
a nowel body of law which would be universally accepted on all territories of the newly unified state and which could also respond to the ambitions of the new state. In legal literature on the topic, the Polish Code of Obligations has been referred to as `the first modern European code’, which, despite the decades
of communism, has managed to preserve its original spirit in the Civil Code of 1964. Secondly, Polish law is often described as a hybrid legal system, sharing characteristics of both the Romanie and Germanie legal families, represented predominantly by borrowed French and German laws.
The purposes of this research is to verify the accuracy of this assessment, because Polish legal theorists have historically tended to superficially accept
the proposition as given, rather than conduct a deeper analysis of the specific provisions of the Civil Code. Finally, the research is intended to induce interesting effects, which are important for the dogma of modern Civil law, the interpretation of the Code, as well as for the contextualisation of Polish legal science. The scope of this research project covers the complete analysis of Polish law of obligations, which has not been attempted before, and the success of this research project
will provide Polish legal science into the European and Global discussion over the law of obligations.