One aspect of the right to court is the right to have a case resolved within a reasonable time in proceedings that do not involve lengthiness. The purpose of the article is to present the problem related to the implementation of the Art. 45 paragraph 1 of the Constitution in civil procedure. The order to examine the case without undue delay is one of the procedural components of the constitutional right to court. The inability of the court to hear the case within a reasonable period of time weakens the efficiency of the courts and undermines trust in the state and its organs that safeguard compliance with the law. Getting a court trial quickly is in the direct interest of not only the parties to the proceedings but also the public interest. It is up to the court to ensure that procedural guarantees of proceedings are effective as quickly as possible and at the same time responding. The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of May 16, 2019, unequivocally pointed to the violation by Poland of the right to a fair trial related to the length of court proceedings. The amendment to the civil procedure of July 4, 2019 may also not accelerate civil proceedings.

President of the Republic of Poland – reflections on the 100th anniversary of the institution

The author presents the historical regulation of the President in the Polish constitutional law of the period 1918–1939. He shows the evolution and specific features of the institution, from the office of the Chief of State in years 1918–1922, through the limited regulation of the President in the Constitution of 1921 and its amendment of 1926, to the original concept of the head of state in the polish Constitution of 1935. The author notes the visible, sometimes negative impact of personal conditions on the regulations contained in the constitutions of the Second Republic, as well as the importance of Polish tradition for the process of creating and the content of the currently binding Constitution of 1997.

The article is a synthetic discussion of legal regulations on the proceedings regarding the responsibility of piastunes of the highest offices in the state on the example of Austrian solutions. The authors present the understanding of constitutional responsibility not only by the Austrian legislator but also Spanish and French, who differently came up to the issue of understanding the responsibility of piastunes of the highest offices in the state.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the world made it necessary to take action to minimize the negative consequences for human health and life and the economy. Citizens’ political freedoms and rights are among the most important rights in a democratic state. In Poland, the Minister of Health introduced the “state of epidemic” by way of a regulation. The procedure and rank of adopted legal acts raised constitutional doubts from the very beginning. First of all, the failure to introduce one of the constitutionally defined states of emergency, especially a state of natural disaster, which by its nature corresponded the best to the epidemic situation in the country. The author put forward the thesis that the state of the epidemic announced in Poland did not meet the constitutional requirements and that there were no grounds for the introduced restrictions on the freedom and rights of an individual. Legal solutions introduced in selected countries in terms of their constitutionality are also compared.

The Status of Illegal Evidence from the Perspective of Article 51 section 4 of the Constitution of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

Understanding the Constitution as the essential act of a legal system prompts us to seek answers to even the most difficult questions in it. One of them is the problem of the status of illegal evidence, the use of which, although facilitating court proceedings, raises doubts from the perspective of constitutional principles. Therefore, this study’s task is to establish the status of such evidence from the perspective of Art. 51.4 of the Constitution, taking into account the theoretical and legal distinction between norms shaping the rules of formalization and conventionalization of evidence activities.

Reliability as a Constitutional Requirement of the Quality of Public Administration

The article analyzes reliability as a constitutional requirement of the quality of public administration in Poland. Integrity is traditionally framed within the control criteria. The second element is the regulation concerning the civil service. The third perspective is determined by the principle of reliability and efficiency of public institutions. The main purpose of the article is to determine the content of the concept of reliability used in the Constitution in these three contexts, as well as what are the differences in meaning from the perspective of the requirements for public administration, derived both from the constitutional provisions themselves, as well as from other normative acts and court decisions. In addition, the purpose of the analysis is also to determine the meaning of the constitutional concept of reliability in the Polish legal system.