Jarosław Sułkowski

Local government authorities in the face of the supremacy of the Constitution – how the local authority perceives the effects of a refusal to publish judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal

In this paper, we present how the local authority perceives the effects of a refusal to publish judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal. We claim the resolutions of the local government bodies created none new legal situation (they did not create any obligation) because this result directly from Article 190 Section 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The obligation to apply the law resulting from the primacy of the Constitution in accordance with the basic law, connected with implementing the principle of direct application of constitutional provisions, also means the obligation of the authorities to comply with the judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal as the guardian of that supremacy.

In our opinion, the resolutions of the local government bodies were not of the nature of acts of power and therefore the considerations of administrative courts that questioned the legality of these acts due to the lack of legal grounds to take them were irrelevant. Therefore, there were no arguments to exclude these resolutions from the legal system based on the arguments presented by these courts.

The paper is meant to briefly present the sequence of events and the analysis of the constitutional crisis in Poland that is not be reduced to the personal matters and solely to the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal. Such crisis seems to result from the lack of recognition for current constitutional order and from the fact that major political forces seem not to value inviolability of constitutional status quo.

It shall be pointed out that in the lack of qualified constitutional majority (that have not been achieved in the last election) preventing from any legal changes to the Constitution, political majority keeps forcing such interpretation of the Constitution which is accordance with their political interests. This rises imbalance of the entire constitutional system in Poland.

The constitutional crisis has also resulted in lowering the position of the Constitutional Tribunal in the public eye, as well as in questioning the guarantees of impartiality and independence of constitutional judges. The dispute has turned into a serious crisis of this branch of judiciary that have been challenged as a necessary part of democratic state of law.

The paper ends with the conclusion of a strong need of the multilevel public debate – involving legal, political and social arguments – on the role of constitutional court in democracy, that may be – particularly in so-called ‘young democracies’ – exposed to extra-legal political pressure

On the Inappropriateness of the Ástráðsson Test against the Presidential Prerogative: A Gloss to the Judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court of November 4, 2021 (III FSK 3626/21)

The Supreme Administrative Court in the commented judgment unfortunately made an unsuccessful attempt to carry out the Ástráðsson test with regard to a person appointed by the President at the request of a politically subordinate (in violation of the Constitution) National Council of the Judiciary. Failure to do so is a kind of paradox of the commented judgment. A significant part of it relates to supranational and international law. „Europeanness” is ubiquitous in the judgment and was additionally included in its thesis. According to its content, assessors and judges are European judges. However, this otherwise catchy statement is not confirmed by the application of the judgment of the ECtHR to the assessment of an judge.

On the constitutional level, the judgment also deserves criticism. The court considered it justified to refer to the judicature of the Supreme Administrative Court, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal, referring to some extent to the presidential prerogative of appointing judges at the request of the National Council of the Judiciary, in order to reach a conclusion about the almost „magically healing” effect of the presidential act of appointment to the office of judge. The NSA also did not comment on the total deprivation of any real influence of the judiciary on the nomination procedure. Therefore, one should ask what is the balancing of the legislative and executive powers with the judiciary power absent from the National Council of the Judiciary?