Penal Liability for Insulting the President. A Study of Criminal Law Codification in the Second Polish Republic and Its Modern Reminiscences

Abstract

The idea of revoking Art. 135 §2 of the 1997 Polish Penal Code, which penalises the acts of insulting the Polish President, is becoming increasingly present in the public debate. The adherents of maintaining this law raise a number of arguments in its favour, including those that refer to historical experience. However, they do not go beyond the provisions of normative acts, in particular the 1932 Penal Code, Art. 125 §2, which stipulates penal liability for affronting the honour and dignity of the Head of State. Referring only to the content of legal acts is not sufficient to present reliable historical arguments. In this work, the tradition of Polish legal thought is scrutinised as regards the issue of penalising the acts of insulting the President. The analysis is based on diverse sources, such as the minutes of the sessions of the Penal Law Section of the Codification Commission of the Second Polish Republic, studies carried out by the members of the Commission, and particular version of the 1932 Penal Code draft. These sources make it possible to reconstruct the interwar ideas for the regulation of the issue studied here as well as the arguments presented by their authors.