The notion of insolvency court

Abstract

The necessity for analyzing the notion of insolvency court arises from several circumstances. First, prescriptions of Polish act in force, i.e., Insolvency Act of 2003, contain two terms: “court” and “insolvency court”. Second, the notion of court itself is differentiated because court, in a structural sense, is not the same as court in a procedural sense (court as a body running legal proceedings). Third, the notion of insolvency court was developed in Polish doctrine of law before it was introduced into the Polish legal system, so it was built independently of legal status. Considerations in the article show that using the term “insolvency court” the legislator indicates a separate entity, i.e., a competent division of a district court (division also called commercial court), but there are some exceptions to this rule. At the same time, it turns out that the sense of the term “insolvency court” in legal acts is in fact not harmonized with the way of using it in a doctrine. Finally, the author comes to a conclusion that the notion of insolvency court is not homogeneous. This must be taken into account both in theoretical and practical considerations, in particular those regarding the court’s competence.