„Persony sądowi przynależące, jakie mają być”. Jurysta doskonały na podstawie wybranych dzieł dawnych polskich pisarzy-prawników

It was in the patrimonial state that the lawyers began to function as a professional group. In the course of time they began to make up an elite of the population of the nobiliary Commonwealth. Soon however there appeared the negative aspects of their activities. The authors of the Polish works on law were concerned with the professional and moral qualifications of lawyers. This referred particularly to the municipal law. The fragments devoted to this question may be found inter alia in the 16th century translations of the sources of the Magdeburg Law, the translations being of Barłomiej Groicki’s (1519/1534–1605) and Paweł Szczerbic’s (1552–1609) authorship. The heavy professional and the ethical demands made on lawyers referred in particular to the judges. What he authors of works on municipal law condemned was the judges’ poor knowledge of law, partiality, corruption, vulnerability to emotions on occasion of producing judgments and desire for distinctions. On the other hand there functioned many requirements that had to be fulfilled by the candidate to the position of the judge. Among these requirements there were inter alia those referring to faith, health, age, sex and social status. The deficiency of the right educational background in law and the weaknesses in the right conducting of the proceedings were particularly visible in case of the penal law. The judges were brought to severe liability for the inappropriate performing of their profession. The high requirements in the area of the perfect knowledge of law, as well as in the area of ethics, applied also to the lawyers other than judges, mostly to the representatives of the parties (referred to by the phrase procurators) and to the lay assessors