We present the institution of a local referendum from a comparative perspective on the example of legal regulations in Ukraine and Poland. The study is the result of the ongoing research of the two Authors and is of crucial importance in the current political situation – the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Hence, it is relevant both nationally, Europe-wide and internationally. The analysis includes a legal comparative analysis of institutions and an attempt to assess their effectiveness. The authors point out that there is a need for effective ‘safeguarding’ in Ukraine to prevent the referendum from being used as a political instrument (at hoc), against the will of the people. The analysis uses a dogmatic and comparative legal method and draws on the authors’ experience of holding local referendums. This research may be useful not only for the researchers of the local government law but also for the legislators.

The Idea of Injustice of the Law and the Constitutional Obligation to Obey It

The obligation to comply with the law specified in Art. 83 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland is important not only in terms of dogma and law. It is also imminently related to such fundamental notions as the essence of law or recognition that unjust law isn’t law. Considering the above, the purpose of the paper is not only to compare the doctrinal concept of the wickedness of law with Art. 83 of the Constitution, but also to answer the question whether this concept can be applied to contemporary democratic states. The analysed framework can especially be meaningful in democracies that are undergoing the so-called reversed systemic transition as it can help protect them against taking quasi authoritarian or quasi totalitarian forms. The wicked law concept can therefore constitute one of the last, if not the last, level of protection for a democratic system, one of the new forms of implementation of the “defensive democracy”, and its use can be a moral and a legal obligation.

On the Compliance with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of the Appointment of Judges – Members of the National Council of the Judiciary by the Sejm

The subject of this text is to determine whether Article 9a of the Law on the National Council of the Judiciary is compatible with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. In order to answer this question, the relationship that should prevail between the various authorities in a system based on the principle of separation of powers was analyzed. Then, doubts were resolved as to whether the NCJ is a body appearing in the division of powers of the judiciary. In the end, it was concluded that in the RP, the Sejm should have no other creative powers over the judiciary than those expressly provided for in the Constitution of the RP. Otherwise, the chamber is placed in a position of unjustified supremacy vis-àvis the judiciary, and the judicial power provides no guarantee that human freedoms and rights will be decided by independent and impartial courts staffed by independent judges.

Stabilising Provisions in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland on the Example of the Concordat Between the Republic of Poland and the Apostolic Capital

The Constitution, in Chapter I of the Republic, contains norms of a stabilising legal status. We address those that raise questions of interpretation, sometimes raised by the doctrine and resolved in different ways. Some are formulated in general terms, which makes it difficult to determine the scope of the protection (stabilisation) provided. We will concentrate on the norms of stabilisation that perpetuate the regulations or even do not allow changes without amending the Constitution of the Republic of Poland – Article 25 Paragraph 4, treating of the agreement concluded with the Holy See, but also those that mention, in various contexts, the constitutional ministers that may not be absent from the government, although the law allows its composition to be shaped freely. It seems that among the norms of a stabilising legal state, the issue of the Concordat is the most emotive. The authors wonder: is it legitimate for the church party to have more rights than the state? A historical-legal method (analysis of the Concordats and the historical-political background) and a dogmatic analysis of the provisions have been used.

The Right to Participate. Introduction to the Analysis of Constitutional Solutions in the Third Polish Republic in the Context of the Concept of Open Democracy

One of the basic elements that distinguish open democracy is civic participation, understood quite broadly, as it covers all civic activities, including non-election activities. Such a wide range of participatory rights was also included in the 1997 Constitution of the Republic of Poland. However, while in the case of open democracy, there were postulates referring to participation as an obligation of citizens towards the community, in the basic law it is limited to civil rights. The aim of the article is to present the characteristics of the phenomenon on both planes.

Public Finances in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of April 2, 1997

As assumed in the title, the study is intended to show only the most important, basic, but cardinal significance of public finances on the basis of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. This notion, often used in colloquial terms, requires clarification of its constitutional and statutory meaning in order to illustrate the essence of its adoption and application in relation to the activities of public authorities. In this context, it will also be important to take into account derivative notions resulting also from the Basic Law, closely related to public finances.

National Broadcasting Council – Constitutional Regulatory Body

The goal of the paper is to present the regulatory nature of the National Broadcasting Council.. The thesis of the paper is the statement that the National Broadcasting Council has been first stipulated as a regulatory body for the market of media services, and second as the body performing the tasks resulting from Art. 213 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. Status of the National Broadcasting Council is based on two acts of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997 and on the Broadcasting Act of 29th December 1992. The plane for the deliberations will be Polish legal regulations, shorthand records of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, as well as scientific papers. The following methods were applied in the study: dogmatic-legal, analytic-synthetic.

Constitutional and Statutory Regulation of Remote Education. Theory Versus Practice. The Case of the University of Rzeszów

The article compares the provisions of the legal regulations on the remote form of education with the actual scope of their application in the academic environment. The research method used was an analysis of documents such as the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, the Act ‘Law on Higher Education and Science’, regulations of the Ministry of Education and Science and internal legal regulations (Orders of UR). The aim of the research was to compare the provisions found in the aforementioned legal regulations with their practical application in the realities of higher education, while the case study of this analysis was the University of Rzeszów. The conclusions obtained may be used to verify solutions both in the course of the standard implementation of the educational process and the introduction of remote education in crisis periods. These include the need for blended learning or the establishment of distance learning centres.

The term “technical regulations” was developed in Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, and it comes down to the obligation to provide information concerning products and rules of the information society. The reason behind said solutions was to lead to unification on the Union internal market. Failure to fulfil the obligation of notification triggers serious consequences in legal transactions. From the point of view of the European Court of Justice, national judge, who is primarily a Union judge, may not use non-notified norms. In this respect there appeared discrepancies in judicial decisions of the Supreme Court, where some adjudicating panels held that in cases in which non-notified technical regulations were used it was necessary to ask the Constitutional Tribunal whether these norms were in force. However, the European Court of Justice clearly indicated that the scopes of cognition of the European Court of Justice and national constitutional tribunals do not coincide. The Court pointed out that failure to use a non-notified technical norm is not.

Poland’s Systemic Challenges Before Joining the Monetary Union in the Context of the Independence of the National Bank of Poland

Poland joined the European Union as part of the largest EU enlargement so far, which took place in 2004. Poland did not take advantage of the passing 19 years of EU membership and did not join the monetary union. The analysis of Poland’s accession to the monetary union should begin with considerations regarding the adjustment and amendment of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland in this respect. In particular, it is necessary to analyze the statutory definition of NBP independence. The literature broadly covers the subject of convergence conditions and the possibility of Poland meeting them. However, the fact is overlooked that Poland, despite the passage of 19 years from the accession to the EU, remains in a significant systemic maladjustment to the provisions of the monetary union. A particular scope of the mismatch concerns the current legal position of the NBP. The lengthening period of Poland’s accession to the monetary union determines the fact that Poland remains in the second development speed in the EU with a clear tendency to increase the distance to the countries forming the euro area.

Constitutionality of Legal Norms on Aesthetic Medicine Services

The lack of a legal definition of aesthetic medicine benefits leads to a number of interpretive doubts about who can perform the above-mentioned procedures and the status of those who benefit from them. Only doctors have the knowledge and competence to change the appearance of the human body, while due to the fact that the legislator eliminated aesthetic treatments from the definition of health benefits, we can find aesthetic offerings, for example, in beauty salons. The definition of a patient has also been immanently linked to the use of health benefits, so those who undergo treatments not aimed at preserving, saving, restoring or improving health are consumers who are not entitled to a number of rights under the Act on Patient Rights and Commissioner for the Rights of the Patients. Therefore, the current Polish regulations on aesthetic medicine services conflict with the norms of the Constitution RP.

Activity of Parliamentary Opposition Deputies on the Example of No-confidence Motions (VI-IX Term of the Polish Sejm)

The article presents the terms of the Sejm in which the parliamentary opposition demanded that the Sejm express a vote of no confidence in members of the Council of Ministers. The authors of the study focused on presenting the parliamentary practice from the sixth to the ninth terms of the Sejm related to the number of motions for a vote of no confidence submitted, rather than on their substantive analysis. The examples of allegations included in the justifications for the motions, indicated in the study, concerned the ministers against whom the largest number of motions for a vote of no confidence were directed in a given term of the Sejm. The purpose of the article is to answer the question: in which term of the Sejm did the parliamentary opposition actively use the vote of no confidence against ministers, demonstrating the mistakes they made and demanding their dismissal?

This paper examines the procedure of electing the Commissioner for Human Rights (Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich) by the Sejm. The considerations are conducted in the context of its representativeness. How does the Sejm proceed when two or more candidates have been nominated? In such a situation, is voting carried out in alphabetical order, in accordance with the principle that the candidate who obtained a, n absolute majority of votes is elected, or is there a joint vote on the candidates, in accordance with the principle that in the absence of an absolute majority of votes by one of the candidates in the first voting, the name of the candidate who obtained the lowest number of votes in the previous round is removed from the list of candidates before the next round of voting? As argued in this paper, the order of voting is not neutral to the effects of voting. From the point of view of individual candidates, it may privilege some and discriminate against others. The text uses the dogmatic method and legal reasoning.

Legal Chaos – About the Difficult but Necessary

The constitutional crisis that began at the end of 2015 left an impact on the functioning of the entire legal system in Poland. Subsequent changes to the regulations and actions taken by the Parliament and the President of the Republic of Poland only deepened the legal chaos and led to situation in which there is no simple way to restore the proper functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal. After many months of work, the Parliament adopted the Act of September 13, 2024 on the Constitutional Tribunal, which would replace the currently applicable legal acts regulating the status of judges of the CT and the functioning of the CT itself. The aim of the article is to examine whether the most important solutions proposed in the Act and the provisions implementing the Act, are consistent with the values and norms resulting from the Constitution and whether they are likely to be effective?

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.

The Syntactic and Chronological Structure of the Article 4 Section 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and the Direct Power of the Nation

The aim of the article is to logically analyze the normative structure establishing the method of exercising power by the Polish Nation. The provision of Art. 4, sec. 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland was interpreted, and then the obtained results were compared with the case law of the Constitutional Tribunal (CT), the views of the doctrine of legal science and political science. One of the goals is to examine whether there are discrepancies between the theories resulting from the logical analysis and the current scientific and institutional practice. The political science and legal approach to this issue will include, among others, the logical structure of the analyzed provision and its possible supplementation – in the chronological aspect – by the case law of the Constitutional Tribunal. The method of analysis of sentences of formal logic, formal-dogmatic, systemic and institutional-legal was used. The analysis shows that from a logical point of view, the structure of the provision – taking into account the assumptions of, among others, the doctrine of law and the Constitutional Tribunal – tends to a situation in which, according to the assumption, it is always the Nation that will exercise power directly or indirectly.