The Construction of the Title of a Normative Actin Polish Legislative Practice in the Years 1918–1920

Abstract

The title of a normative act, although lacking normative power, constitutes one of the key elements in the structure of any legal act. It serves several essential functions: informational, organisational, indicative, and formal. Its proper construction supports, among other things, legislative processes, the application of law, and its interpretation. The aim of this article is to examine how the titles of normative acts were shaped during the initial period of the modern Polish legislation, i.e. in the years 1918–1920, when there was a lack not only of formally established rules of legislative technique, but also of well -established and permanent practices in the law-making
process.

In order to identify the roots of possible practices and models, the article briefly outlines the construction of the titles of normative acts as they appeared in the official journals of the partitioning powers. Subsequently, an analysis was carried out of the acts published in the Journal of Laws of the Kingdom of Poland/of the Polish State (Dziennik Praw Królestwa Polskiego / Państwa Polskiego) and in its successor, the Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland (Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej), in order to determine what editorial practices were employed at the time and which of them survived and became embedded in the later law-making norms.

The article focuses on analysing the structure and arrangement of the elements comprising the title of the act, rather than on the issue of formulating the subject of regulation. The research was conducted using historical and comparative methods, and the results are presented in the form of tabular and descriptive summaries. Particular attention is given to the extent to which the practices of that period influenced the development of the Polish principles of legislative technique adopted
in 1929.