| Abstract [eng] |
This master thesis provides analysis of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, examining the internal and external causes of the state that determined the necessity of fundamental state reforms in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth federation established by the Act of the Union of Lublin as well as factors that enabled to take advantage of the unique accidental opportunity for the state's interests within then complicated historical-geopolitical situation in adopting the Constitution precisely in the confederal Four-Year Sejm, whose work it was not possible for foreign forces to disrupt by quasi-legal means through the exploitation of the liberum veto vote of easily bribed representatives in the Sejm. Research of the relations between the parties of the 1569 established union proves the political flexibility of the GDL worthy of the name of the nation of Vytautas the Great in constantly working for the preservation of independent legislation and the strengthening of the statehood of the GDL often bypassing the provisions of the Act of the Union of Lublin. Analysis of the constitutional tradition of the GDL starting from the written state-wide privileges of the GDL granted from the 14th century at the latest and further developed in the 16th century in the Statutes of Lithuania enables us to detect the indisputable influence of tradition in the provisions of the Commonwealth’s 1791 Constitution and to see the interrelationship between constitutional acts spread over four centuries. Arguing against the controversial outdated historiographical narratives about allegedly abolished statehood of the GDL upon forming the Union of Lublin or abolished at least by the too narrowly understood 3 May 1791 constitution (solely the 3 May Governance Law) the author of this work openly supports the conceptually new seven-act constitution attitude formed by Lithuanian constitutionalists towards 1791 Constitution. Only when researching the 1791 Constitution from the standpoint of constitutional law its constitutional entirety is revealed and the GDL state is convincingly "discovered", which legally did not “disappear” anywhere until the last partition of the Commonwealth in 1795, even though its sovereignty was reduced. |
