A few words about reform of polish legislative system

From the point of view of the participating or monitoring bodies, the legislative process may be found as unclear and unsatisfying in terms of citizens’ access. The state authorities should be interested in engaging the society in it more widely, though. The more discussion and social consultation within the process of law-making, the greater chance for avoiding errors and mistakes as well as for a social approval and a high level of law preservation. The paper is an attempt to present the very subjective list of the elements of law in need for speedy changes. It also points out the de lege ferenda solutions that might significantly improve its quality.

The institution of the child’s hearing in the light of the Polish Constitution (selected issues)

The subject of this article is the analysis of the institution of the child hearing provided for in Art. 72 (3) of the Polish Constitution. The right of a child to be heard is one of the fundamental rights of a child and is part of child’s right to protection in legal proceedings concerning it. The publication presents the concept of a child itself, which is defined in various ways due to the lack of one universal, system-wide definition of a child, and also presents an example catalog of matters falling under the constitutional premise – “establishing children’s rights”. The group of entities obliged to hear a child, such as generally accepted public authorities and persons responsible for the child, were also introduced. The introduction of the above-mentioned concepts made it possible to assume that the institution of hearing the child is necessary to ensure the fundamental rights of the child and as an element of its right to protection in legal proceedings concerning it.

Public Hearing in Poland – a Legitimising Dimension of Citizen Participation in the Legislative Process

The article is devoted to the practice of using participatory tools in the law-making process in Poland. The subject of the study was the public hearing introduced into the Polish legal order in 2005. It mainly used the institutional-legal and comparative methods. Embedded in the framework of the theoretical concepts of participatory, deliberative, and pluralist democracy, the presented analyses focus on the legitimizing dimension of the public hearing procedure. The analysis of the normative construction and practice of using this institution allows for formulating general conclusions that indicate its legitimizing potential, including its potential to influence institutional arrangements. At the same time, however, this practice revealed a specific “sensitivity” of public hearing procedure to the political and social context, carrying the risk of transforming it into a kind of facade institution for the representative rule (with a somewhat illusory participatory character.