Kazimierz Baran The Constitution was less progressive in introducing radical social changes. The division into estates (nobility, townsmen, peasants) was preserved although newdevices made this division less hermetic, and particularly the peasants were expressis verbis taken under the protection of law. Had the Constitution survived this formula might have predicted further legislation in this respect. Obviously in that part of Europe sweeping social changes were believed unadvisable since they might put down to the intervention of three despotic states that surrounded the Commonwealth. This intervention was not avoided however. It was against this Constitution that Catherine the Great organized a war under a guise of supporting a handful of frustrated magnates, participants of traitorous Targowica Konfederacja. One way or the other, the tradition of studies of foreign law and constitutionalismwas fully established among the Polish thinkers and historians. This tradition is still continued and, although most of the Polish output in this respect is in Polish, numerous contributions appear also in other languages. Recently some part of Polish research in this niveau has been made available to the non-Polish reader through a large volume on La codification Européene du Moyen Age au si'ecle de Lumieres, Etudes réunies par Stanislavc Salmonowicz, Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne, Warszawa 1997. The volume, including the articles written by Juliusz Bardach, Irena Kwiatkowska-Malinowska, AdamLityhski, StanislawSalmonowicz, Katarzyna Sojka-Zielinska, and Waclaw Uruszczak, deals with a large spectrumof topics analysing the European codifications of the past. The reader of the volume can find in it the comparative studv of Constitutio Criminalis Carolina and Sobornoie Ulozenie, discussion of Codification of Frederick II in Sicily, the analysis of Lithuanian Statutes, etc. Salmonowicz, the editor of the volume, is known for a remarkably rich research whose topics vary considerably from French and German legal history to the general history of legal doctrine. Polish legal historians deal also widely with Roman and Canon law. In an exempli gratia way the research of late Rafal Taubenschlag on the law of antiquity may be currently known beyond Poland. The same may be said about the works of Wieslaw Litewski of Cracowwhose present research on Roman law is available mostly in German. Any larger European library would contain his works such as e.g. Depositary's Liability in Roman Latv, Archivio Giuridico, Modena, 190, fasc. 2 (1976), L’effet libératoire de la 'litis contestatio' dans les obligations solidaires actives en droit de Justinien, Labeo, Neapol, 24 (1978), Romische Grundlagen der Schiedsgerichtbarkeit nach der polnishen Zivilprozessordnung von 1964, in: Tradition und Fortentwicklung im RechtFestschrift zum90. Geburtstag von U. von Liibtow, Rheinfelden-Berlin 1991 or Mundliche Klage und Klageschrift in den ältesten ordines iudiciarii, in: Wirkungen europdischer Rechtskultur (Festschrift fiir Karl Kroeschell), Mtinchen 1997. The non-Polish legal historian can learn a lot on the situation 316
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