Problem of the organisational and procedural standards concerning judicial system in the case law of the French Constitutional Council

The aim of this article is to outline the content of a constitutional right to judicial protection in France. Thus far, the subject matter has not received much attention in Polish legal literature. It cannot be denied, however, that from the point of view of comparative legal scholarship, France is one of the most relevant points of reference. As the right to judicial protection has not been clearly expressed in any of constitutional acts of the V th Republic, the author has focused on the case-law of the French constitutional court – the Constitutional Council, by reconstructing main elements of the right under consideration. At the same time, scholarly obstacles resulting from the specificity of the French constitutional system have been given due consideration: the laconic wording of constitutional texts, the conciseness of reasons for Constitutional Council’s decisions, as well as the lack of methodological clarity and terminological coherence of its jurisprudence. All of the above difficulties notwithstanding, it has been possible to indicate essential elements of the right to judicial protection: 1) the principle of impartiality and independence of a judicial body (associated immanently with performing judicial functions), 2) the right to an effective judicial remedy, 3) the right to a fair trial, as well as 4) the right of defense. Special derivative guarantees result from these requirements. In its most recent jurisprudence, the Constitutional Council has associated the specific rights and principles of which the right to judicial protection is composed with Article 16 of the Declaration of Rights of 1789. According to this provision, public authorities have a duty to implement the separation of powers and to guarantee the protection of rights to individuals. Without the right to judicial protection there would be no separation of powers nor any guarantees of rights, hence there would be no constitution in such a state.

The right to a fair administrative trial in the light of the standards arising from the Article 45 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

The aim of the paper is to analyze and criticly assess the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the applicability of the Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights to national legal procedings. The latter provision refers to cases in which the civil rights and obligations of individual or any criminal charge against him are determined. The author discusses the criteria which enable to qualify the case as civil or criminal in the autonomous meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights. She accepts in general the approach of the European Court of Human Rights, but underlines a need for further clarifications of applied criteria, to avoid inconsistence and allow the future case-law to be predictable.

Judgement of ECHR of 8 November 2021 in the case of Dolińska-Ficek and Ozimek v. Poland is undoubtedly one of the most important judgements issued by the Strasbourg Court in recent times. At the same time, it constitutes a continuation of the existing case-law of the ECHR in similar cases against Poland, in particular the reasoning expressed in the judgement of 22 July 2021 in the case of Reczkowicz v. Poland (Application no. 43447/19). In the judgement, the ECHR held that Poland’s action resulted in a violation of Art. 6 (1) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950, which establishes a set of due process guarantees.