Published: 2022-03-31

‘Primum non nocere’: Kazimierz Kolańczyk on the 1975 Reform of Law Studies in Poland

Grzegorz Nancka
Zeszyty Prawnicze
Section: Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2022.22.1.03

Abstract

In 1975, a new curriculum for law studies was introduced in Polish universities. It was designed by Jan Baszkiewicz and was based on the principle of flexibility, which meant that law faculties were given a considerable extent of discretion with regard to arranging the sequence of subjects undergraduate students were to take. However, the new curriculum envisaged far-reaching modifications to the subjects on the syllabus. One of these changes was that Roman law was dropped from the syllabus, which met with a considerable amount of protest from the scholars of Roman law and historians of law. This article focuses on the way the reform was seen by Kazimierz Kolańczyk, one of the leading Romanists in postwar Poland. Kolańczyk was highly critical of the prospective reform and voiced his criticism during a sitting of the Council of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His comments in a previously relatively unknown speech are an important source on the way the academic community reacted to the 1975 reform. This article also presents the principles underlying the reform and the circumstances in which it was drafted.

Keywords:

Kazimierz Kolańczyk; Roman law; undergraduate courses of study; education.

Download files

Citation rules

Nancka, G. (2022). ‘Primum non nocere’: Kazimierz Kolańczyk on the 1975 Reform of Law Studies in Poland. Zeszyty Prawnicze, 22(1), 41–63. https://doi.org/10.21697/zp.2022.22.1.03

Cited by / Share


This website uses cookies for proper operation, in order to use the portal fully you must accept cookies.