FUNDACJA UBI SOCIETAS, IBI IUS

FOUNDATION

Dear Sirs!
We warmly welcome you to the website of the Foundation " Ubi societas, ibi ius ". We have the great pleasure of presenting to you the established goals of the Foundation, which are:

• inspiring, supporting and promoting scientific, educational and legislative initiatives concerning Polish law;

• working towards realizing the principles of the rule of law, promoting and protecting the rights of various social groups, including consumer rights,

• development and Europeanization of the Polish legal system,

• security of circulation of public documents.

We deeply believe that with the help of people who want to support our activities, we will be able to achieve our lofty goals!

The Great Encyclopedia of Law Collector's Edition

This is the largest scientific undertaking in Poland. Its implementation has involved so far:

• 47 professors serving as editors of scientific volumes,

• 25 professors acting as scientific reviewers of the volumes,

• 754 authors of entries in volumes published so far, including:

  • 187 prof. dr hab.,

  • 245 dr hab.,

  • 220 dr,

  • 102 mgr.

• the whole contains 11,921 entries published on over 11,000 pages of B5 format .

The important role of the Encyclopedia in the widespread dissemination of knowledge about law was appreciated by the Presidents of the Republic of Poland , who assumed Honorary Patronage over the publication:

• 2012-2015 President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski

• 2015-2025 President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda

  Editors of the Great Encyclopedia of Law:

  • Deputy Editor-in-Chief – prof. dr hab. dr hc Roman Hauser .

  The editors of the individual volumes are outstanding professors who hold positions in, among others, the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court.

  Since 2011, the Ubi societas, ibi ius Foundation has been publishing the Great Encyclopedia of Law, a unique publication on an international scale, providing access to a wealth of legal knowledge. The encyclopedia was published with the aim of raising the legal awareness of Polish society. The publication is carried out by the efforts of the Polish scientific community.

FROM THE EDITORS

Law plays an increasingly important role in the functioning of the state, social, economic and individual life. Good law, fulfilling many functions, promotes rational development in macro- and microspace.

Where there is a group of people, there is also law. The ancient Romans formulated this idea concisely, stating ubi societas ibi ius (where there is society, there is law). Both of these statements, the concise one and the extended one, each in its own way, have the flaw of being unclear and ambiguous. And for the law, for its accessibility and the fullest possible usefulness, as well as clarity and universal knowledge and understanding, these shortcomings must of necessity, if not eliminate, then at least minimize. Therefore, for this purpose, a group of outstanding Polish lawyers gathered to meet these requirements to a certain extent. The means to this end, let us hope significant, is to be the development and publication of the Great Encyclopedia of Law.

This is an undertaking as necessary as it is complicated. Law, because in every country, due to its dynamic nature, is a very sensitive matter in terms of content and language. Moreover, in Poland, for historical reasons, the complexity of this matter is also compounded by the problem of territorial and temporal validity of different legal systems in different parts of Poland. Although these are only echoes of times gone by, these issues should not escape the attention of the editors of the Encyclopedia. After all, the basic issue of fundamental importance for law in Poland, and everywhere in the world, is the very understanding of "law". This is because this concept is vague and ambiguous. This is the case both in Polish and in other languages.

The fundamental canon that anchors this edition is the understanding of this concept that corresponds to the vision of positive law. We understand it to mean that it is a phenomenon of the kind that takes as law a set of norms or a legal system that is a derivative of their social establishment. On the other hand, however, we do not lose sight of philosophical concepts that seek the meaning and understanding of law as rules that flow from human nature or, more broadly, from the physical structure of the world.

In addition to the anchor that provides a certain stability to the work, we also accept the boundary conditions of the course that will accompany us in developing this work. The rudder that determines the direction of the work is the understanding of law according to the maxim of Iuventus Celsus, ius est ars boni et aequi (law is the art of goodness and equity), on the one hand. On the other hand, the rule of the late classical Roman jurist Ulpian, who states, iuris prudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, iusti atque iniusti scentia (the science of law is the knowledge of divine and human matters and the knowledge of what is just and what is unjust).

Our encyclopedia is planned in 25 volumes with the prospect of its expansion. The predecessors of this work were the modest but useful Small Encyclopedia of Law published by PWN in the 1950s, as well as the single-volume Great Encyclopedia of Law edited by Eugeniusz Smoktunowicz and re-published in 2005 edited by Brunon Hołyst.

With this work, Poland joins the leading countries such as the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, which have multi-volume and constantly updated encyclopedias of law.

Our Encyclopedia is intended not only for lawyers, but also for all those who have to use legal provisions in their everyday life.

The scientific editors of the individual volumes are theoreticians and practitioners of law with recognized scientific achievements, holding honorable positions, including judges of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court.

The authors of the entries are outstanding and talented young lawyers, for whom the pages of the Encyclopedia create good conditions for further scientific development.

The main message of the Encyclopedia is to promote knowledge of law also among broad circles of society. Raising the level of legal culture is one of the conditions for observing the legal order.

Perhaps the encyclopedia will also contribute to raising the level of law-making. The Catholic writer, Jesuit, court preacher of Zygmunt III, Piotr Skarga believed that bad law is worse than the most cruel tyrant, because a tyrant can become better or die, bad law always does harm.

The encyclopedia also perpetuates the memory of many generations of lawyers who made a valuable contribution to shaping a rational legal system in Poland.

The numbering of the volumes does not indicate the importance of the issues presented; it is related to the publishing schedule.

We express our great gratitude to the President of the Republic of Poland for granting Honorary Patronage to the Great Encyclopedia of Law.

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Roman HauserBrunon Holyst

President of the Foundation's Board Jerzy Strzezek

Editor in Chief Brunon Holyst

HISTORY OF POLISH ENCYCLOPEDIAS IN THE YEARS 1836-2025

The first Polish multi-volume encyclopedia entitled: "Encyklopedia powszechna, kolekcja wiadomoj najpotrzebszych dla wszystkie stan", authored by brothers August Emanuel and Krystian Teofil Glucksberg, owners of printing houses and bookstores in Vilnius and Warsaw, was published in the years 1836-1840. Due to the lack of subscribers, only volumes I-IV (including entries "A-Czy") were published. Twenty years later, the initiative to publish the then Polish encyclopedia, which was undertaken by a representative of another famous dynasty of Warsaw booksellers and publishers, Samuel Orgelbrand, was successfully completed. The first issue of the Encyclopedia reached subscribers on October 1, 1859. From the initially planned 15 volumes, the encyclopedia grew to 28 volumes. It was edited by 181 Polish scholars. Publishing such a huge work within nine years, which were shaken by the tragic struggles of the Polish nation with the Russian occupier, was an unprecedented achievement. The most outstanding Polish encyclopedia of the partition period, after Orgelbrand's encyclopedia, is considered to be the "Great Illustrated Universal Encyclopedia". The initiative to publish it came in 1889 from the then editors of "Wędrowiec" - Julian Granowski and Saturnin Sikorski. In the years 1892-1914, 55 volumes in 28 volumes were published. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 interrupted work on this noteworthy work, under the entry "Patrokles". In the interwar period, several universal encyclopedias, large and small, were published. The most famous and appreciated of them was the "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trzaska, Evert and Michalski", five volumes of which were published in the years 1925-1928, and the sixth volume, entitled "Encyclopedia of the 20th Century", was published in 1938.

A new era in the history of the Polish encyclopedia was opened, twelve years after the end of World War II, by the project of the "Great PWN Universal Encyclopedia". This modern encyclopedia was developed by a team of 1,000 people, mainly scientists, under the editorship of the outstanding philosopher and praxeologist Tadeusz Kotarbiński. Twelve volumes of the encyclopedia were published in the years 1962-1970, contained 82 thousand entries, and the circulation was 178 thousand copies. The next edition of the "Great PWN Universal Encyclopedia" took place in the years 2001-2005. It was created by 3,000 authors, consultants and reviewers. The editorial team consisted of 100 people under the direction of Jan Wojnowski. In terms of entries (140 thousand), it was almost twice as large as its predecessor.