Ustawa o Trybunale Konstytucyjnym z 1997 roku. Geneza i ewolucja przepisów

• Authors: Szymanek Jarosław

Title variants

EN

The Constitutional Tribunal Act of 1997: Its Origins and Evolution

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The article provides an analysis of the origins and subsequent evolution of the provisions of the Constitutional Court Act of 1 August 1997. The starting point for the presented comments is the submission to the Sejm in 1996 of a the Constitutional Tribunal Bill. With the adoption by the National Assembly of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland on April 2, 1997 the said bill became irrelevant. At that time, it was decided that the original bill should be adapted to the requirements of the new constitution, by transforming the proposed law into an act implementing the constitution. The bill, containing a number of legislative innovations as compared to the existing legal framework (e.g. a constitutional complaint and granting the Tribunal the jurisdiction over international agreements), was passed on 1 August 1997 and was amended many times thereafter. The author examines the subsequent amendments, introducing minor changes in the legislation. He also presents the proposed amendments to the 1997 Act that were not adopted. The said Act was fi nally repealed as a consequence of the adoption of a completely new Constitutional Tribunal Act on 25 June 2015. The conclusion of the article is that the issues that had arisen in the context of the application of the Act of 2015 were not at all innovative or unprecedented. Many of them were already addressed in earlier legislative work and, importantly, many of them were well known to those involved in the legislative process. In the autumn of 2015 (and later), the issues that had already raised doubts and concerns over the 1997 Act were reopened, including the right of the Sejm of the expiring term to elect new judges of the Tribunal; the issue of the term of offi ce of the President and Vice-President of the Tribunal and the mechanism of their appointment by the President of the Republic of Poland; the procedure for the selection of constitutional judges with defi nition of the role of the Sejm, the President of the Republic of Poland and, possibly, other actors and, fi nally, the rules of procedure of the Tribunal, including, in particular, the issue of compositions of benches smaller than a full one.

Keywords

EN

Constitutional Tribunal Act of 1997; Constitutional Tribunal; amendment; bill

• Publisher: Kancelaria Sejmu / Chancellery of the Sejm
• Journal: Przegląd Sejmowy
• Year: 2017
• Issue: 5(142)
• Pages: 73–107

Contributors

author

Szymanek Jarosław

• Dr hab., prof. Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego