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intimidation of lawyers and slowly led to legislation designed to bring them once again under strict control.
The campaign against lawyers, accusing them of peddling influence and charging excessive fees, reached a climax with the passage in December 1963 of a law drastically curtailing the influence and independence of the bar. Under the law's provisions, remaining private law practice has been virtually abolished, and all full-time trial lawyers must belong to teams working under a fee-sharing system and under the guidance of the team's party representative. The law of 1963 further provided that lawyers' earnings, which frequently amounted to several times the average worker's monthly wage, were to be regulated to a level "recognized as socially correct." The reassertion of party control over the judicial system as a whole was thus symbolized by the passage of the law on the bar despite the vigorous opposition of the legal profession. Although the bar as a whole is no less independent of the party then any other segment of the judicial process, over the years, there has developed a small number of prominent lawyers who occasionally conduct a spirited and audacious defense before the courts, even in cases with politically sensitive overtones.
(2) Legal codes - For a long time after World War II, Poland's civil and criminal codes were a compendium of prewar legislation, repeatedly modified and amended by postwar Communist directives, regulations, and decrees. Attempt to recodify this body of disparate legislation into unified civil and criminal codes from early 1950, when a special Codification Commission composed of committed Communist lawyers and other experts was entrusted with the task. The political events of 1955 and 1956 temporarily halted the work of the commission which by then had still produced no results; this work resumed during 1957 in an atmosphere of some political uncertainty and both professional and lay suspicion and hostility toward its intentions. The checkered history of the efforts at recodification is illustrated by the fact that the new civil code and code of civil procedure were adopted only in 1964 and that corresponding criminal codes were not enacted until April 1969, effective from 1 January 1970.
As of late 1972, the Gierek regime has given no indication of making major changes in the 1970 criminal code, which had been hailed by the Gomulka regime as an example of progressive humanism, but left no doubt of its intent to suppress any attempts to challenge regime authority. The code had substantially increased the number of crimes carrying long prison sentences, and listed eight separate categories of crimes - hitherto not so clearly defined - carrying the death penalty. Capital offenses under the code are as follows:
- 1) high treason, including attempts to deprive Poland of its independence;
- 2) high treason involving cooperation with a foreign organization and aimed at detaching part of Poland's territory, weakening its defense potential, or changing its political structure;
- 3) espionage;
- 4) making an attempt on the life of a public official or political activist;
- 5) sabotage (a saboteur is elsewhere vaguely defined as one who "attempts to weaken the people's power, sparks disturbances, or induces a mood of general unrest, thereby hindering the normal functioning of the state and its economy");
- 6) leading an organization which illegally acquired property of substantial value, thereby hindering the proper functioning of the state's economy ("substantial value in elsewhere defined at over 100,000 zlotys, i.e., about US$5,000 at the official exchange rate);
- 7) leading a group whose activity is likely to do great harm to the Polish economic (none of the operative phrasing of this provision is elsewhere more closely defined);
- 8) premeditated murder.
It is clear that the provisions calling for the death sentence highlighted primarily the Gomulka regime's preoccupation with protecting its political, social, and economic controls. It is to be noted that the innovations of the new code in this category of crimes lies in wording; provisions permitting the imposition of the death sentence in virtually all of the above cases were already included in the disparate postwar legislation which the 1970 code replaced.
An important provision reflecting the regime's preoccupation with youthful hooliganism is one specifying that minors formerly subject to adult procedures and penalties from the age of 17 may "in certain circumstances" be so treated from the age of 16. At the same time, however, the former sentence of "restriction of freedom" usually imposed in cases of minor hooliganism and other misdemeanors was made more lenient and now amounts to a period of stringently supervised probation.
The criminal code clearly gives the education and rehabilitation of offenders priority over their punishment. Nevertheless, in addition to categorizing many previously less specific capital offenses as well as those that carry the maximum 25-year prison sentence, the code substantially raised prison sentences generally. For example, the holding of unauthorized meetings, public gathering, or demonstrations can be punished with up to 10 years' imprisonment, in
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