About the Institute

The Institute of Legal Sciences (previously the Department of Law and Administration) is one of the five Institutes of the College of Social Sciences of the University of Rzeszów. It dates back to the late 1960s when the Order of the Minister of Education and Higher Education of 18 April 1969 established the Subsidiary of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Rzeszów. Starting the three-year Vocational Administration Studies, it gave rise to the academic studies of administration in the south-east Poland. Since 1972 the two-year master degree has been well established whereas the full-time legal studies were created no sooner than in 1980. Prior to incorporating the Department of Law and Administration, the Subsidiary of Maria Skłodowska-Curie University into the University of Rzeszów, the students could apply to legal studies, both full-time and extramural, and administration as extramural studies.

1 September 2001 the Department of Law became one of the departments of the University of Rzeszów. The new academic staff contributed to making the educational offer much wider. After starting the first-degree studies of administration the name of the Department was changed to the Department of Law and Administration. Since 1 October 2019, with the new structure of the University of Rzeszów, it was incorporated into the College of Social Sciences and transformed into the Institute of Legal Sciences. In terms of its educational activity, the Institute offers two fields of study, namely law (long-cycle studies, either full-time or extramural) and administration (first-degree and second-degree studies, either full-time and extramural). The graduates from the Institute (previously the Department of Law and Administration) have the possibility to find employment, inter alia, in the judiciary, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, corporate legal professions, in civil and local administration.

The Institute consists of 16 departments, 3 laboratories and 2 independent organizational units, that is the Academic Center of Administrative Training and the Center of Mediation and Conflict Resolution aiming at cooperation with practitioners in order to establish the standards of good administration practice and conducting mediation. It is worth to mention that within the Institute (since 2016) there has been the Association of Ius Publicum which organisers the trainings for the legal practitioners but is also the co-organiser of scientific conferences.

The research and teaching staff of the Institute is made up of 86 academic teachers, 3 of whom hold the title of professor, 23 have post -doctoral degree, 46 remain PhD holders. Some of them are legal practitioners with considerable experience. The lecturers of the Institute are well-known both in the Bar and the academic world being them the authors of cited scientific papers and of the expert and scientific opinions as well as the speakers at the local and international scientific conferences.