Restitutio ad integrum – prawno-polityczna doktryna ośrodka legalistycznego polskiej emigracji politycznej na Zachodzie (1945-1990)

The article raises the subject of legal and political doctrine formed by the presidential (legalistic) centre of the postwar Polish pro-independence emigration in the West. The objective of the text is to define assumptions of the mentioned doctrine as well as to analyze conditionings of this doctrine’s reception in circumstances of the system-wide transformation of the Polish People’s Republic over the years 1988-1991. The author, in a chronologically problematic order, presents political realities and legal basics of the constitutionalizing of the emigrational “state-in-exile”, ideological, legal and political fundamentals of the emigrational doctrine as well as unsuccessful – according to the au- thor – attempts to integrate the assumptions of this doctrine into the process of changes taking place in the country at the breakthrough of the 1980s and 1990s.