Anna Tarnowska

Acts with the Force of Statute – Models, Theory, and Practice in the Polish Parliamentary-Cabinet System in the Years 1921–1926 and after 1989

The centenary of the enactment of the March Constitution in Poland prompts questions about the constituent parts of the achievements of Polish constitutionalism of that period. The authors have found the issue of the sources of law worthy of attention, and among the latter, especially those acts that are situated between the classically conceived competences of the authorities, i.e., acts with the force of statute issued by the organs of executive authority. These acts, formally absent from the system of sources of law of the March Constitution until the enactment of the August amendment of 1926, appeared in the practice of the Second Republic at the time of the budgetary crisis in 1924, in the form of acts issued “by the President of the Republic on the basis of resolutions of the Council of Ministers”. These “special kinds of autonomous regulations” [Z. Cybichowski] provoked intensive discussions regarding both the admissibility of such delegation of legislative power, as well as the legal essence and constitutionality of aforementioned regulations. The authors would like to take a closer look at the institution of legal acts with the force of statutes as sources functioning in the era of democratic constitutional solutions establishing a parliamentary-cabinet system [i.e., in the years 1921–1926 and after 1989], without neglecting the historical and comparative context in which the examined institution evolved.

* Niniejsze opracowanie pozostaje w części wynikiem badań przeprowadzonych w ramach realizacji grantu „Law-making delegation in representative democracy” Narodowego Centrum Nauki, w konkursie Opus 11, umowa nr 2016/21/B/HS5/00197.