Principle of “lex retro non agit”. Is the Law not Retroactive?

The principle of non-retroactivity is recognized as one of the foundations of the civilized system of the modern state. The essence of the principle of non-retroactivity can be reduced to the assertion that the law should, in principle, act “for the future”, therefore it should not be legal norms that would apply to events that occurred and ended before their entry into force. In other words, the legal consequences of events taking place under the old norms should be assessed according to these norms, even if new regulations are already in force at the moment of making such an assessment. The retroactive act of the regulations is when the lawmaker orders certain relevant legal facts, existing before the day of entry into force of the new provisions, assessed in the light of these new provisions, introducing a fiction that these provisions were already in force on the date of the assessed facts. If the regulation contained in the regulation obviously acts “for the future” and at the same time has legal effects only 3 months after the entry into force of the act, it does not violate the principle of non-retroactivity. This doesn’t mean that without violating the principle of non-retroactivity, the legislator may freely interfere in existing legal relations and modify them freely. The boundary here is, above all, observance of the principle of protection of acquired rights and principles of protection of trust in the state and the law. It is unacceptable to create norms retrospectively, if the entities to whom these standards relate could not rationally anticipate such decisions, and extraordinary circumstances or goods subject to constitutional protection, such decisions do not justify. You can withdraw from it, but only exceptionally and for justified reasons, giving the norms the ability to influence the existing situations, if there were valid reasons, and the interested entities had grounds to expect the adoption of such standards.

The right of defence is one of the fundamental human rights. In criminal proceedings, its implementation may translate into defendant’s right of undertaking his defence on his own, as well as of having recourse to a professional defender. In this regard, the defender (an attorney or a legal counsel) has been given a certain set of entitlements which, on one hand, can aid in performing his own duties and, on the other hand, provides a legal framework for the execution of these duties. The way in which the defender’s activities are conducted depends on the will and the contribution of the defendant himself. At the meeting point of the defender-defendant relationship there may appear certain occurrences, and some of them prohibited by penal legislation, which imply a number of issues and thus need to be clarified. Those issues include, inter alia, the scope of the right of defence as well as defender’s competences, the lawfulness of the activities being undertaken, the question of the scope and framework of defender’s legal privilege with regard to his knowledge on the crime.