Graduates from Higher Education Institutions of Lublin Who Held the Positions of Supreme Court Judges in the Period of the Polish People's Republic

Abstract

The article presents graduates from Lublin higher education institutions who, in the course of their legal professional careers, assumed Supreme Court judge positions in the period of the Polish People's Republic. The chronological framework of the study covers the period from the Supreme Court resuming operation in 1945 until the end of the last, sixth term of the Supreme Court in 1990, although nominations of KUL (Catholic University of Lublin) and UMCS (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University) graduates as "regular" judges of the Supreme Court concern the very period of the Polish People's Republic. The extension of temporal scope has resulted in presenting the profiles of two judges, pre-war KUL graduates, who were acting judges of the Supreme Court from 1948 to 1949 at the off-site adjudication centre of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court in Lublin. It was 1959 when two KUL graduates were appointed judges of the Supreme Court under the procedure set out in the Law on the System of Common Courts. From 1962 onwards, the Supreme Court used to be staffed through an appointment of Supreme Court judges for five-year terms by the Council of State according to the Act on the Supreme Court. These included five post-war KUL graduates, three of whom had started their studies before the outbreak of war. The end of provision of legal education at KUL (the last graduation ceremony took place in 1952) and the launch of legal studies at UMCS in 1949 resulted in as many as seven UMCS graduates holding the Supreme Court judge positions in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s. The first of them was elected in 1972 for the 3rd term of the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court closed its operation on 30 June 1990 (as a result of shortening the 6th term due to serious changes made in the system of government) it was composed by two KUL graduates and six UMCS graduates.