Confessional Secrecy in Criminal, Civil and Administrative Cases as a Condition for the Implementation of the Constitutional Right to Freedom of Conscience and Religion

The text is devoted to the issue of protection of the secret of confession provided on the basis of criminal trial, civil and administration process. This secret is the immanent element of the rites of persons exercising their freedom of conscience and religion under Art. 53 sec. 1 of the Constitution. Freedom of conscience and religion is one of the most important. The differences in the approach to clergy witnesses and possible solutions for the unification of mechanisms governing their interrogation were presented.

Like all official activities, also the opening of a will was carried out in the time and place provided by law. They were the resultant of various factors, such as the place and circumstances of the death of the testator, the time of funeral, as well as the accessibility of the will itself, witnesses to its preparation and physical presence of the official for whom the procedure of opening the will had to be carried out. In each case, there were widely available places, because the opening of a will was public. This article considers the regulations regarding the time of legal opening of a will, in particular the precedence of the funeral of the deceased testator. Next explains the factors determining the place of the opening of the will, among others, the territorial competence of state officials in this respect, the availability of the witnesses of the will and the place of its storage.

Brights and Shadows of Article 41 of the Code of Conduct Misdemeanour Cases in the Context of Article 31, Section 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

The text gives an analysis of the solutions concerning the examination of a witness in the course of misdemeanour proceedings. The two-pronged nature of these solutions is noted here. On the one hand, the provisions of the 2001 Act recapitulate a number of solutions applied in the criminal trial, i.e. originating from the 1997 Code of Criminal Procedure, while on the other hand they constitute solutions of their own. The latter are rules concerning, inter alia, the exemption of a witness from secrecy of classified information and secrecy connected with the function or profession performed. The publication notes the contradiction of Art. 41 § 3 and § 4 of the Code of Conduct Misdemeanour Cases with the constitutional benchmark of protection of the right to privacy and their incompatibility with the rules set out by Art. 31 sec. 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland.