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The work of the international research team now makes it possible to place the phenomenon of socialist period law in the context of the common heritage of the legal culture of the Visegrad Group countries. The project is co-authored by the Faculty of Law of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (FPR UWB), the project coordinator is a team of experts from the Faculty of Law and Public Administration of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and Slovak experts from the Faculty of Law of the University of Trnava in Trnava and Hungarian colleagues from the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Szeged also participate.

Experts deal with the issue of the legal legacy of the socialist period in the Visegrad Four countries. They focus mainly on the period of its arrival after World War II. "Some changes in the legislation at that time were so drastic that they led to a break in continuity with pre-war law and caused profound changes in the position of the individual. In many cases, however, the older legislation remained in place for at least some time," said Vendulka Valentová from the Faculty of Law of the University of West Bohemia. In all participating countries, this regulation was at least partially based on the same – Austro-Hungarian – roots, but further development took different paths. This was despite the fact that in all cases after 1945 there was a strong Sovietization of their legal systems.

"However, the approach was different. For example, some countries have gone down the path of abolishing and replacing old regulations, while others have left some of them in force – although not used. However, some fundamental changes have also taken place outside the legislation or even illegally. For example, there were a number of completely illegal procedures of law enforcement authorities applied especially in political trials, even on the basis of instructions from assigned Soviet advisors, which we encounter as models not only in the V4 countries, but basically in the entire Eastern Bloc," said Vilém Knoll, project coordinator for the Faculty of Law of the University of West Bohemia.

An important milestone in the implementation of the entire project was the February conference held in Krakow, Poland, entitled (Dis)continuity of Legal Systems in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland after WWII: Difficult Heritage in the historical premises of the Jagiellonian University Museum. In the sections focused on law and the socialist state, the judiciary, the economy and society, topics from the areas of constitutional, criminal, procedural, civil, family and agricultural law were discussed. On behalf of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, for example, Marián Byszowiec and Vilém Knoll presented a paper entitled Socialist Legality and Interference with the Independence of the Judiciary in the 1950s, in which they presented not only illegal procedures in political trials, but also interventions by state authorities preventing the prosecution of selected persons. Denisa Kotroušová and Jindřich Psutka presented Inheritance Law in the context of changes in property and family law, Petr Dostalík introduced the paper Legal Regulation of Joint-Stock Companies at the Dawn of Communist Czechoslovakia and Vendulka Valentová contributed with a lecture entitled The Great Financial Robbery or the Czechoslovak Monetary Reform in 1953 and Its Reflection in the Criminal Prosecution of Participants in Pilsen Protest Actions, which has close ties to regional history and reflected the important speech of the inhabitants of Pilsen against the currency reform.

On the basis of the research, the experts also prepared a collection of English translations of  selected Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Polish legal regulations from the socialist period available in the IURA database (https://iura.uj.edu.pl). The final output will be a series of articles published in the journal Krakowskie Studia z Historie Państwa i Prawa (Cracow Studies of Constitutional and Legal History).