Importance of the Case-Law of the German Federal Constitutional Court for the Case-Law of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal

The aim of this article was to find an answer to the question about the role played by the case-law of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in the case-law of the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland, and to the question about the sort of cases heard by the CT, in which references to the FCC case-law occurred most often. An attempt to answer the above-mentioned questions were asked after empirical research. The judgments of the CT, publicly available on the Online Judgment Portal on the website of the CT, served as empirical material. In the case-law of the CT, it was not clearly indicated whether, in the case of referring by the CT to the case-law of the FCC, the Tribunal did it for comparative purposes, whether it was related to the interpretation of legal norms by the CT or for another purpose.

The Premise of Impoverishment in Tax Overpayment vs. Pro-constitutional Interpretation – Reflections Against the Background of the Resolution of the Supreme Administrative Court, file ref. no. I GPS 1/11

This article undertakes an analysis of the correctness of the pro-constitutional interpretation presented in the resolution of the Supreme Administrative Court of June 22, 2011, file ref. no. I GPS 1/11. In the resolution in question, the Supreme Administrative Court, citing constitutional norms, came to the conviction that the right to a tax overpayment is limited by the premise of the taxpayer’s impoverishment. The considerations made therein were met with much criticism from representatives of the literature. And for many years there was also a dispute over the scope of being bound by it, which indirectly may also indicate the negative attitude of the judicature as to the interpretation contained therein. Within the scope of the article, I will express my position as to the correctness of this type of interpretation provided by the Supreme Administrative Court.

Collisions of the Concepts of Sources of Law in the Polish Constitutional Order from the Perspective of Legal Practice

The content of the law depends on what is recognized in a given legal order as a source of law. Therefore, important are the constitutional provisions that contain the regulation of sources of law and to what extent, the content of these provisions corresponds to the needs of legal practice. Regulation of sources of law becomes comprehensible only within the framework of theoretical or dogmatic concepts of legal studies. The subject of analysis will be the “collision” between the normative conception of sources of law and the conception of a closed catalog of sources of law, and the consequences of this “collision” determined by the relationship of each conception to the requirements of legal practice. The concept of a closed system of sources of law does not correspond to the needs of legal practice. Therefore, legal regulation in this area should be supplemented to include the differences between both concepts.