Cardinal laws

All you want to know about Cardinal laws

The Cardinal Laws (Polish: Prawa kardynalne) were enacted in Warsaw, Poland, by the Repnin Sejm of 1767–68. Ostensibly they were intended to ensure the "Golden Liberty" of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. In fact, they made it certain that the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would remain ineffectual and easily controlable by its neighbors. The Cardinal Laws were imposed on the Commonwealth by Russia's Empress Catherine the Great with Russian forces commanded by Prince Nicholas Repnin and by 1775 were sanctioned as well by Prussia and Austria.

In particular, the liberum veto, the free election of Poland's king, Neminem captivabimus, the rights to form confederations and to raise a rokosz—all the privileges of the nobility that had made the Commonwealth's political system of "Golden Liberty" ungovernable[1]—were guaranteed as unalterable in the Cardinal Laws.[2]

The Cardinal Laws were a form of constitution. They were annulled by the Great Sejm of 1788–92 but reinstituted by the Grodno Sejm in the aftermath of the 1792 War in Defense of the Constitution.

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