The key institutions regulated in book one (the General part) of the Polish Civil Code

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief description of selected issues from the General part of the Polish Civil Code which regulates a number of general institutions applicable in all other areas of civil law, especially in property law, the law of obligations, inheritance law or family law, and also in other parts of widely understood private law including commercial law or intellectual property law. Firstly, the article presents the definition and a general overview of the subjects of civil law (individuals, legal persons, including the State Treasury, limited liability companies and joint stock companies, cooperatives, foundations, universities or local government units, and finally the so called “statutory” persons). Then, the author turns to the definition and general overview of the objects of civil law relationships (especially tangibles and intangibles, movables and immovables, things specified as to their identity and things specified as to their kind, and finally the enterprise being an organized complex of tangible and intangible assets). The last part of the article deals with the construction of representation in civil law transactions (including representation by a company’s body, by a proxy and the construction of joint mixed representation), the main principles of representation, the legal consequences of improper representation, the particular forms of acts in law (such as the document form, the ordinary written form, the electronic form, the written form with a certified date, the written form with certified signatures, and the notarial deed) and different consequences of not complying therewith (ad solemnitatem, ad eventum and ad probationem).