Zygmunt Ziembiński

Zygmunt Ziembiński OPR (June 1, 1920 – May 19, 1996), usually cited as Z. Ziembinski, was a Polish legal philosopher, logician, and one of the most prominent theoreticians of law in Poland in the second half of the 20th century.

He was Professor of Jurisprudence at the Adam Mickiewicz University, where between 1981 and 1991 he chaired its Department of Legal Theory and Philosophy of Law. His most famous works are Practical Logic (Springer Netherlands, 1976) and Basic Problems of Jurisprudence (Polish Scientific Publishers PWN, 1980).

Biography

Early life Ziembiński was born in 1920, as the son of Maria Romiszewska and Zygmunt Sr., in Poland's capital, Warsaw. His father had a doctorate in psychology and worked as Director of Libraries of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education; his mother was a painter. He was educated at the Stanislaus Kostka Gymnasium in Warsaw (1938).

During his second year of college, at the outset of the Second World War, Ziembiński enlisted in the Home Army resistance movement, then received a commission as podporucznik in the 27th Home Army Infantry Regiment. He saw much action, taking part in the Silent Unseen's Operation Freston (1945). Another ideas suggested by him were the differentiation between a legal norm and a legal provision, as well as the conception of two coupled norms and the notion of a norm of competence.

He was a member of the Polish Philosophical Society, Polish Sociological Association, Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences, International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR) and served as a vice president of the International Association of Legal Methodology.