Political Conditions of Inheritance Law. Works on Amendments to Polish Inheritance Law in the Period 1947–1964

Abstract

The inheritance law seems to be a field that is of little interest to the world of politics and arousing far less social emotions than family or criminal law. However, after World War II the Polish authorities used the inheritance law in order to actively shape and consolidate the socialist system. As it was stressed on many occasions, inheritance is inseparably connected to ownership, and that determines the nature of all other property institutions. The influence of ideology and politics on Polish inheritance law was especially visible during the works on codification of civil law in the period from 1947 to 1964. However, as it turns out, most representatives of the doctrine were able to bypass the political determinants in order to keep a high legal standard. The author strives to show how the scholars tried to save the classical inheritance law institutions by manipulating the political doctrine. By ideological justifications of the proposed legal solutions in fact they enabled to keep in the 1964 Civil Code most of the basic inheritance law rules of 1946. Unfortunately it was impossible to prevent the introduction of provisions on inheritance of farms into the Civil Code.