Searching for National Components in Building own Legal Culture: The Debate on the Legal Situation of Women in Interwar Poland

Abstract

Broad legislative works conducted in interwar Poland and concerning various branches of law focused, on the one hand, on the uniformization and reform of particular district systems inherited from the annexing powers, and on the other hand on the idea of building a national codification. In that context the programme for modernisation of socio-economic relationships and the elements derived from foreign legal systems, rooted in the previous century, were balanced with the values, customs, and specific features, regarded as native and constituting components of national identity of the Poles. Against this backdrop, a debate on the legal situation of women was taking place, of key importance from the perspective of legislative changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in other legal systems around the world. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyze its course from the angle of components of Polish national identity, tradition, and legal culture, defined in broadly understood public debate.