Determining the correct relationship between the sources of law existing during the communist period in Poland is today not only a historical asset. It turns out that the administrative courts conduct a lot of proceedings in which they are forced– while examining the legality of the decisions on expropriation from the 50’s of the twentieth century – to use the normative acts issued in the communist era. In this context, there arise problems related to identifying the impact of the provisions of the resolutions of the Council of Ministers on the interpretation of other pieces of legislation, particularly statutes and decrees. In this paper the author argues that the regulation on expropriation procedures in light of the provisions of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic of 1952 fall within the scope of exclusivity of a statute. Courts adjudicating on matters of legality of decisions taken during the communist period cannot modify the significance of the act of a higher rank (statute, decree) based on the provisions of the resolutions of the Council of Ministers. It is one of the key directives of interpretation which must be used also to determine the content of legal acts issued under the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic.
The aim of the article is to present an interpretation of the requirement that internal legal enactments be issued on the basis of statute (Article 93 para. 2 of the Constitution). This constitutional prerequisite provides the basis for two kinds of approach. Under the fi rst one, Article 93(2) of the Constitution requires that an authorizing provision that defi nes the entity, the form and content of the internal enactment be created by statute. The second approach permits an internal enactments to be based on the norms of statute which defi ne the tasks and powers of a particular authority. In the author’s view, the interpretation of the statutory basis requirement should be made in reference to a number of constitutional principles, including reliability and effi ciency of the constitutional bodies as well as the stability and permanence of legislation. In view of these values, the requirement for a statutory basis should be treated fl exibly so as to provide an appropriate instrument to government administration to exert infl uence on its subordinate organizational structure.
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