The subject of this article is the regulation and actual participation of the President of Poland in the process of creating the Constitution of 1997 and its amendments, made or only postulated. The author recalls the procedure of adopting the Constitution of the Third Republic of Poland, its only two amendments during the 25 years of its validity (with the use of a very difficult amendment procedure), and several draft amendments, introduced by the President or related to his office. It describes the President’s 2018 initiative to hold a consultative referendum on amending the Constitution, unfortunately, rejected by the Senate. He also emphasizes the historical regularity of Polish constitutionalism, which consists in creating a constitution „for someone” or „against someone”. In conclusion, he recognizes that creating and introducing changes to the Constitution is the greatest challenge for legislation, as well as a manifestation of real care for the common good, which is the Republic of Poland.
Konstytucja normuje szereg różnych dóbr i wartości związanych z życiem indywidualnym i zbiorowym. Dla konstytucyjnego ustroju republiki najważniejsze są dwa rodzaje wspólnot obywatelskich: państwo jako dobro wspólne oraz jednostki samorządu terytorialnego. Artykuł analizuje te wartości w świetle Konstytucji RP z 2 kwietnia 1997 r., ustaleń historycznych i fi-lozoficznych, a zwłaszcza nauki prawa i orzecznictwa Trybunału Konstytucyjnego. Zdaniem autora, wspólnota samorządowa stanowi integralny element aksjologii konstytucyjnej, czyli idei dobra wspólnego, należącego do istoty państwowości polskiej. Zasada decentralizacji wła-dzy publicznej stanowi doniosłą konsekwencję techniczno-prawną koncepcji państwa republi-kańskiego i zasady pomocniczości, a nie samoistne uzasadnienie aksjologiczne relacji państwa i samorządu terytorialnego. Relacje te oraz ich społeczna akceptacja zależy nie tylko od regu-lacji prawnych, ale też od postaw i odpowiedzialności polityków oraz zwykłych obywateli.
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The constitution regulates many different goods and values that relate to individual and collective life. In the constitution of the republic, two types of civic communities are most important: the state as a common good and local government units. Author of the article analyzes these two values in the light of the Polish Constitution of April 2, 1997, historical and philosophical foundations, and especially the science of law and case law of the Pol-ish Constitutional Tribunal. According to the author, the self-government community is an integral element of constitutional axiology, i.e. the idea of the common good that be-longs to the essence of polish state. The principle of decentralization of public authority is an important technical and legal consequence of the concept of the republican state and the principle of subsidiarity, and not an independent axiological justification of the rela-tionship between the state and local government. These relationships and their social ac-ceptance depends not only on legal regulations, but also on the attitudes and responsibil-ities of politicians and ordinary citizens. The actual relationship between the republican state and the local government community and their social acceptance depends, however, on legal regulations, but also on the attitudes and responsibilities of politicians and citizens.
The author of the expertise analyses in detail the content of the Resolution No. 129/2020 of the National Electoral Commission (PKW) of 10 May 2020 and its legal consequences for the election of the President of the Republic of Poland, in the context of the regulation of the Polish Constitution and the Electoral Code. This Resolution was in fact an act supplementing the binding legal regulations, not directly provided for in the Polish legal system, and constituted a quasi-source of law. In the existing crisis reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impossibility of holding the presidential election on the originally ordered date of 10 May 2020, the Resolution enabled the Speaker of the Sejm to re-order and legally conduct the elections on the new date. The condition for its implementation was the publication in the Journal of Laws, which the author recommended.
The author presents a constitutional regulation of the Polish model of presidential election and states of emergency and relates them to the specific situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Then, he analyses in detail the content of the recommendations of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) of 26 May 2020 (Respect for Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law during States of Emergency – Reflections), regarding the elections in states of emergency and its significance for the presidential election in Poland in 2020. The opinion positively evaluates all the Commission’s recommendations and considers that the existing and new exceptional Polish electoral law regulations respecting the principles of democracy and rule of law are fully complaint with them.
Trust is a basic element of human existence, of a person’s relations with other people as well as social relations. It is a normed and protected value, among others in civil, criminal and administrative law, and particularly in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The described legal regulations are based on an empirical assumption that moral sensitivity, honesty and human conscience do not sufficiently guarantee respecting the rights and goods of other legal entities. Detailed legal regulations and jurisdiction of autonomous and independent courts are still needed. The author analyzes the concept of citizen’s trust in the state and the rule of law, formulated in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal, and its criticism in the science of law. Confronting the constitutional idea of trust with the Polish political reality shows that even judgments of the constitutional court do not always inspire trust if they are passed by a majority of votes with numerous dissenting opinions attached. According to the author, respecting the natural human right to legal security by the state is a more solid basis for effective trust in citizen-state relations than the link between trust and the rule of law clause detached from social reality. The rules of decent legislation are a direct consequence of the principle of legalism and a necessary component of the axiology of a republican state as acommon good. With reference to the recent years’ crisis regarding the judiciary (the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary), which is the most important guarantor of the human right to legal security, the author proposes some positive solutions in the form of constitutional changes. Real trust in relations between people, and also in their relations with authorities, does not result from provisions of law, the constitution and codes, but from an individual’s freedom, responsibility and pursuit of good, stemming from natural law.
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