Acta Iuris Stetinensis

This article explores the possibility of integrating civil law doctrines with other doctrinal disciplines (primarily criminal law) and legal theory, with respect to the concept of the “act.” To address this question, it first asks whether acts exist (or whether there are such things as acts), or whether only (some) people use the term “act,” and further, whether the term “act” is or ought to be part of the language of the civil law doctrine. The analysis leads to the conclusion that there are no acts as such, only the term “act,” which, depending on the adopted linguistic convention (particularly a given “theory of the act”), captures various aspects of extralinguistic reality. Depending on which aspects are captured within a given convention, the term may serve more or less effectively in achieving specific social objectives. The term “act” is of no practical use to the civil law doctrine; indeed, attempts to introduce it into civil law discourse appear to be detrimental. The sole exceptions are those provisions (namely, Articles 442¹, 928(1)(1) and 1008(2) of the Polish Civil Code) that attach legal consequences to what has been classified as an “act” under criminal law — specifically, under the currently prevailing interpretation of the Penal Code. For these three provisions, civil law doctrines must simply adopt, wholesale, the understanding of “act” provided by criminal law doctrines. If any integration is to be spoken of here, it is a minimal one: through acceptance or incorporation. The article further argues that “act” functions as a predicate (rather than a name or a nameforming functor), with a structure roughly as follows: X performed C if and only if X changed their position in manner S during time t1–tn, and if, during t1–tn, this change of position was accompanied (or preceded) by a mental state M (or a set of mental states M1–Mn), resulting from biochemical processes P1–Pn occurring in X’s brain, and this change of position in manner S during t1–tn affected aspects A1–An of extralinguistic reality in manner Z during the same time interval.