Instruments of Constitutional Tribunal enabling  to avoid derogating unconstitutional norms

According to Article 190 para. 1 of the Constitution, Constitutional Tribunal has competences to derogate unconstitutional norms, therefore, to interfere in the legal system directly. However, there can be specified some exceptions to this basic result of Constitutional Court’s judgments. The article indicates that Polish constitutional court has instruments which enable to avoid derogating unconstitutional norms. It is worth underlining, that it is always Constitutional Tribunal’s decision to apply any of them. Especially, it doesn’t depend on petitum of pleading or procedures. In the article, it was taken into consideration: an adjournment of the date of the loss of unconstitutional provision’s binding force, a judgment concerning legislative omission, an affirmative interpretative judgment and a signaling. Their analysis is based on criterion of legal basis, aim and result of their application. It is described influence of these instruments on the legal system and, on the other hand, their significances for the authorities applying the law.

Judicial Activity of the Constitutional Tribunal and the Secondary Unconstitutionality of Law

In this article, on the one hand the subject of consideration will be the reasons of coming into being the secondary unconstitutionality as a consequence of entry into force a judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal. In the abovementioned context, we should first take into account the principle of accusatorial procedure, which may lead to merely piecemeal elimination of unconstitutionality. In turn, it may effect coming into being more negative consequences than being into force unconstitutional provision. Secondly, it seems that the type of judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is the basis for classifying the norm as secondary unconstitutional, is of considerable importance. On the other hand, possibilities of prevention the secondary unconstitutionality by the Tribunal will be analysed. The question is, whether the Tribunal is able to mitigate the consequences of the principle of accusatorial procedure, particularly whether it is able to modify the scope of the challenged provisions. Regardless of this, judiciary instruments, which enable to form the consequences of the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal flexibly, seem to be more effective as measures to prevent secondary unconstitutionality. It is worth noting that some of this measures taken by the Tribunal are questioned in the literature.