Prof. Witold Kulesza with the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta

The President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, conferred the distinction on the Professor “for outstanding merits to the administration of justice, for achievements in academic activity in the field of criminal law and for contributions to promoting the truth about the recent history of Poland”.

Prof. dr hab. Witold Kulesza 
Prof. dr hab. Witold Kulesza graduated in Law from the University of Lodz in 1973 with distinction as the best student of his final year and began his professional career at the Department of Criminal Law of the Institute of Criminal Law as a trainee assistant under Prof. Jan Waszczyński.

He was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Laws (PhD) in 1982 on the basis of his dissertation Zniesławienie i zniewaga (Ochrona czci i godności osobistej człowieka w polskim prawie karnym – zagadnienia podstawowe), which received the third prize in the Państwa i Prawa [State and Law] competition for the best doctoral and habilitation theses and was subsequently published in 1984 by Wydawnictwo Prawnicze. In the same year, he was appointed to the position of Assistant Professor. He obtained the postdoctoral degree in Legal Sciences in the field of criminal law in 1992 on the basis of the work Demonstracja. Blokada. Strajk (Granice wolności zgromadzeń i strajku w polskim prawie karnym na tle prawa niemieckiego), published by the Lodz University Press in 1991, which received the first prize in the Państwa i Prawa [State and Law] competition for the best doctoral and habilitation theses.

In 1992, he was appointed Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Substantive Criminal Law at the Department of Criminal Law. In the years 1992–1995, he served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Lodz, and from 1998 to 2006 he represented the Faculty in the Senate of the University of Lodz. On 30 December 2015, he was awarded the academic title of Professor of Legal Sciences on the basis of the monograph Crimen laesae iustitiae. Odpowiedzialność karna sędziów i prokuratorów za zbrodnie sądowe według prawa norymberskiego, niemieckiego, austriackiego i polskiego (Lodz University Press, 2013) and an evaluation of his overall academic achievements.

Text: dr hab. Jan Kulesza, Asasociate Professor at the university of Lodz
Edit: Daniel Maliński
Photo: Private archive of Prof. Witold Kulesza