Current challenges of sources of law in the Slovak Republic

The article gives a comprehensive overview of the issues of sources of law in the Slovak Republic. It describes the different types of sources of law of Slovak Republic and their constitutional and legal regulation and also focuses on the analysis of the critical moments of constitutional and legislative process. The text explains the basic form of the national legal system, which in the traditional terms takes the form of a pyramid, the top of which are the Constitution and constitutional acts. This traditional concept is confronted with the current development of relations of the systems of international law, European law and national law, on the background of the theory of inter – system legal pluralism. The article is focused on the definition of the status of international treaties in the legal order of the Slovak Republic, with particular emphasis on the status of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights) and the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the European Union. For this purpose the relevant case-law of the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic is demonstrated, and the issue of the concept of the relationship between the national law of the Slovak Republic and the European Union is raised. The unspoken material core of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic is to be considered as a criterion of recognition of the principle of the primacy of European Union law.

Internal legislation constituted by the President of Poland

The article concerns the internal legislation adopted by the President. These acts should correspond to the characteristics set out in the Article 93 of the Polish Constitution. Under this provision, resolutions of the Council of Ministers and orders of the Prime Minister and ministers shall be of an internal character and shall bind only those organizational units subordinate to the organ which issues such an act. Orders shall only be issued on the basis of statute. They shall not serve as the basis for decisions taken in respect of citizens, legal persons and other subjects. Resolutions and orders shall be subject to scrutiny regarding their compliance with universally binding law. The president has few legal options to enact this type of legislation. The law-making power in relation to the head of state in a few cases is vested in the Constitution. This applies to the Presidential Chancellery, the National Security Council and the Cabinet Council. These cases are described in the article.

The Concept of Constitutional Reform of the  Republic of Poland According to the Polish Solidarity Party

In May 2013 the party of the Polish Solidarity with Zbigniew Ziobro (further called „SP”) announced the project of changes in the current Constitution of the Republic of Poland from 2 April 1997 (further called „Constitution RP”). This project was presented in the form of consolidated text of the constitution which obtained the name of „New Constitution of the Republic of Poland” (further called „Project SP”). The Project SP proposes amendments or repeals of 83 articles of the Constitution RP (it makes a bit more than a third of its all articles) as well as addition of nine articles, not always completely new as for their solutions. The Project SP proposes introducing changes in the Constitution of RP covering in particular: system of legal sources, list of general rules of the system of state, forms of direct exercising power by the nation, especially introducing the presidential system of government, which mean far-reaching reforms of constitutional system of authorities. The article focuses the attention on their analysis and assesses them from the viewpoint of their democratisation, rules of legal state and contributing to rising effectiveness of activities of authorities while comparing them with regulations introduced by the Constitution of 1997. The estimate of proposals of constitutional system of RP covered by Project SP is not to be unidirectional – only approving or only critical. Some of these proposals deserve a positive mark, others arouse estimative dilemmas due to their loose ends or controversial character; finally there are those which cannot result in other than negative marks.

Evolution of the Legal Nature of Professional Standards for Property Appraisers Against the Background of the Assumptions of the System of Sources of Law in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997

Of all the controversial elements of the system of sources of law in the Republic of Poland, professional standards of property appraisers have received the least attention in the professional literature. Meanwhile, these standards constitute a vivid example of the indicated problem, and the comments raised during their discussion, relating in particular to the views of legal science and jurisprudence on the properties of the system of sources of law of the Republic of Poland, can be successfully extrapolate to the remaining controversial elements of this system. Hence, the presentation of the evolution of the legal nature of professional standards of property appraisers against the background of the assumptions of the system of sources of law in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 seems by all means justified and purposeful.

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.

Conditioning the Application of Statutory Provisions on the Issuance of a Communicate by a Minister

In the article, the author discusses the legislative practice of conditioning the application of statutory provisions on the issuance of a communicate by a minister. The author mentions one example of such a practice and notes that a communicate is an act of internally binding law. This, in turn, leads him to the conclusion that the presented phenomenon is unconstitutional, as it allows influencing the legal situation of an individual by an internally binding act. In the author’s opinion, such practice is unconstitutional first and foremost with Art. 2 (in particular the principle of trust to the state and the law made by it) and Art. 10 sec. 1 (the principle of the separation of powers – adopting provisions regulating the application of a statute falls within the competences of the legislature and not the executive). This makes this phenomenon clearly negatively assessed by the author.