Freedom of Contract on Crossroads: The Struggle over the Concept of Contract Liberty in 20th Century Poland

Abstract

The text delves into the origins and theoretic premises of the concept of freedom of contract that developed in Poland throughout the 20th century. It attempts to provide a more precise understanding of the economic and political dynamics that led to creation of the quite strong laissez faire perception of contract liberty, which still seems to underpin most of the Polish discourses about contract law. In so doing, the article seeks to analyze two crucial dynamics that seem to be determinative for the current shape of freedom of contract in Poland: the direct translation of the inter-war model of contract liberty into the current civil law, as well as the rapidity and profoundness of the transformation from the centrally-steered to free market economy in the 1990s. This view on intellectual history of contract liberty is, in turn, applied to analyze frictions in transposition of EU contract law, which occur conspicuously in the Polish realities.