EN
The article depicts the National Council of the Judiciary’s role in the Polish legislative process. The Council, although being an organ of no legislative powers, it influences the legislative procedure. It is so due to the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgments concerning a mechanism of delivering the Council’s opinion during law-making process. This mechanism is derived from the Article 186 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland which stipulates that the National Council of the Judiciary shall safeguard the independence of courts and judges. Violation of the rules referring to that mechanism has been a multiple cause of declaring legislative process unconstitutional. This article attempts to reconstruct and structure the elements of the mechanism. Therefore, it concentrates on the essence of the above-mentioned role of the Council, the phase of the legislative procedure when the Council’s opinion ought to be obtained and the legal forms of delivering it. The article also proposes the concept of "normative novelty" which might be useful for determining whether there occurs a constitutional obligation to engage the Council in law-making process.