Legal History in Poland: Research and Instruction. Past and Present By Kazimierz Baran L when 1 read the title of this fragment of the session of StockholmSeminar that 1 was to take part in: The role of legal history in reconstructing the Balticum, I reminded myself of how in the declining years of the Communist regime in Poland one of the underground opposition parties, highly critical of the Communist system, in the very name that it adopted to identify itself, directly recurred to the traditions of the old Polish Constitutional devices. Namely, the founders of the party called it Konfcdcracja Polski Niepodlegtej (Confederacy of Independent Poland). Konfederacja has a special meaning for the Poles. In the minds of those of them who have some idea of the Polish past the Konfederacja is immediately associated with armed league of the nobility who organized themselves to oppose the monarch that violated the law. The adoption of this name by the opposition confirmed that the knowledge of Polish constitutional history was formative of the aspirations of the people of Poland at the present day. And indeed Konfederacja was one of the devices of the old constitution. These were so called Henrician Articles of 1573, a piece of written PolishLithuanian Constitution of the past, that contained a proviso known as de non pracstanda oboedientia. Pursuant to it, the mass of Polish gentry could implement ius resistendi. Thus they could legally oppose the monarch who transgressed upon the law. Then they took the business in their hands to make the State apparatus continue its functions. And they could do it not only when they opposed the monarch whose acts were contrary to law. They could also do it customarily if the State agencies ceased to function, for instance when the enemy invaded the country. The existence of such institutons as Konfederacja immediately betrayed certain specific democratic traits of the Constitution of the past and the awaraness of the mass of the nobles of being capable of adopting a civil society positic')n vis-a-vis the agencies of the State. Recurring to the crucial period of the early 1990’s it is also noteworthy that the image of the State which, thanks to the legal historians, was preserved in the collective memory of the Poles, was that of the structure that was expected
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