Dispute over the Interpretative Verdicts of the Constitutional Tribunal –  the Standpoint in the Discussion

The article consists of few parts. At the beginning, the author discusses a definition of interpretative verdicts and a history of the dispute between The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal over this kind of judgments. The author doesn’t present arguments that are described in literature but climes that the dispute concernes three problems: legality of interpretative verdicts, their binding force and interpretative verdicts as a base for reopening proceedings. In the second part, two arguments against delivering interpretative verdicts are formed. The author claims that the Constitutional Tribunal should limit a number of such judgments because there is no legal ground for interpretative verdicts in the Constitution and because they abridge independence of judges of the Supreme Court and other courts. In the last part of the article, the author describes a genetic cause of the litigation between the Tribunal and courts. It is claimed that the dispute has been generated by dissentions between methods of interpretation of legal acts used by the Tribunal and the Supreme Court. The Tribunal takes advantage of the method of derivation and the Supreme Court usually uses the method of clarification. These methods are in contrary to each other and because of this they are the base of the dispute.

A few remarks on the formalized instruments  of judicial interpretation of administrative law by administrative courts

The main purpose of this article is to present some of the formalized instruments of judicial interpretation of administrative law by administrative courts. There are no doubts that administrative courts take part in the process of interpretation of administrative law by using different means. The most popular instrument is a court judgment – court interprets law for the purpose of issuing a decision. The administrative courts’ participation in the interpretation of law should be also linked to the Supreme Administrative Court’s resolutions. No matter which of the described formalized instruments of the interpretation of law is used by administrative courts, the outcome of the interpretation process contributes to the development of non-codified administrative law and its science.

Originalism of Antonin Scalia as a theory for interpretatation of the law

This article discusses one of the contemporary American theories on interpretation, i.e. plain meaning originalism. The propagator and co-author of this theory is Antonin Scalia – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United State. Scalia’s originalism is a doctrine about how judges ought to interpret statutes and constitution according to their original meaning. Therefore we can define it with textualism based on language competence of the primary legislator and primary addressees. Originalism uses interpretative, language and system directives. In general it refuses using function and purposefulness. What determines the meaning of law is legal codes and tradition. According to Scalia law does not change automatically together with changes of social needs and expectations. He criticizes the concept of “living constitution” regarding it as a source of judicial discretionality. Members of parliament, elected in a democratic voting, should update the law, not judges.

The development of the “natural law” movement during the Enlightenment era has influenced European legal thought and provoked discussions on the law interpretation method. In the 19th century, French and German legal scholarship developed different methodological approaches referring to some historical, social, and multidimensional aspects and foundations of law. The article explores the evolution of the main scientific positions on the method of interpretation of the law which have appeared in French jurisprudence in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In France, from the early 19th century, the positivist school of exegesis dominated legal studies. In the half of the century, a new trend of scientific research was developed. The representatives of the current have pondered pluralism of the methods applied in legal research. Then, in France, we observe the rise of the “free scientific research” initiated by François Gény.

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 U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence has often delineated the borders of American racial politics. In some way, the Supreme Court decisions reflected economic, political, cultural, and ideological values of the contemporary society. The decision of Plessey v. Ferguson was a symbolic establishment of the separate but equal doctrine. It was also significant from the perspective of American federalism. In the 1950s, several rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court influenced American racial politics and paved the way for changes in the context of the development of civil rights. The decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was victory of the civil rights movement. It was perceived as a model for the subsequent cases. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the right of interposition. It was assumed that the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional applied not to the state but only to federal judiciary.

The Constitutional Principle of Consumer Protection (Article 76 of the Polish Constitution) in the Judgments of the Supreme Court

One of the constitutional principles is the principle of consumer protection expressed in Article 76 of the Constitution. The paper adopts a research hypothesis according to which this principle plays an important role in the process of application of the law by the Supreme Court and justification of its judgments. The hypothesis was verified through the analysis of several dozen judgments issued during the period of the Constitution. This analysis made it possible to confirm the hypothesis. The Supreme Court invokes the title principle in many of its judgments for persuasive purposes (to strengthen the argumentation contained in the justification) and also uses it as an interpretative guideline. The role of the title principle has increased after the entry into force of the provisions on the extraordinary complaint, as recourse to it creates the possibility to set aside final judgments whose issuance has led to the violation of consumer rights.

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.