The purpose of the study is to analyse the concept of general clause formulated by Józef Nowacki in its basic form in the 1980s. It focuses on several issues that are most important for the shape of the concept. The first is the very notion of a clause as an indeterminate phrase that is part of a legal provision. It corresponds to the crucial components of the situationist concept of the clause – the negation of the referential character of clauses (reference to general norms or values) in favour of treating the clause as an imperative of evaluating, implemented by the law-applying entity in the form of concrete and situational evaluation. The analysis of Nowacki’s concept leads, in the final sections of the study, to a demonstration of its theoretical implications, which, although not within the mainstream, do not prevent the search for common grounds with the normative concept of the clause, negated by the author.