The Implementation of the Constitutional Right to Education in Educational Practice. An Educator’s Perspective

The political, economic and social changes that took place in Poland after 1989 meant that one of the first areas of social life that was subject to thorough legal changes was the education system, changes which, as practice proves, are of a continuous nature. The aim of the article is an attempt to evaluate the implementation of the constitutional right to education (Art. 70) and related rights (Art. 53, paragraph 3 and Art. 73) in the context of the organization and functioning of the Polish education system. This is the view of a pedagogue who has been analyzing the legislative solutions of subsequent authorities of the Ministry of Education in the context of everyday educational practice for many years, with particular emphasis on the effects of the introduced formal and legal solutions.

In recent years, the European Union (“EU”) has faced unprecedented challenges in the rule of law. Besides apparent dangers, it has also offered the Union, its institutions and member states important space for new openings, self-rediscovery, and revisiting certain integration paradigms. This analysis argues that the “rule of law/value crisis” in the EU has created the same space for the Court of Justice to take on the paradigmatic jurisprudential shift from the market to the union of law and values. It posits that the European discourse must revisit the theory of supranational adjudication and offer a new reading of the Court’s mandate and function within the evolving supranational governance and design. In this process, reference to Art. 19 TEU and its connection to Art. 2 TEU have a special explicatory and axiological significance.