Rafał Smoleń

Progress in the Constitutional Theory. Evolution of Doctrine on (un)Constitutional Change of Constitution

This paper is an attempt to characterize the phenomenon of a scientific progress in jurisprudence on the example of the evolution of the ideas on the conditions and scope of the allowable constitutional amendments of the 1997 Constitution of Poland. Explaining the notions of formal and material limits of amending a constitution, we show that those limits are constituted not only by the explicit constitutional regulations but also by the practical context of constitution’s functioning and doctrinal assumptions being the fundaments of a political or social system that it realizes. In the final part of the paper the identified elements of the progress in constitutional law are seen in the light of the theories of scientific progress formulated in the literature, with the conclusion that the described change of the ideas on material amendments of the Polish Constitution bears the marks of a scientific progress.

The Procedure of Poland’s Withdrawal from the European Union: Unconstitutionality of the Art. 22a para. 1 and 2 of the Act of April 14, 2000 on International Agreements

Art. 22a para. 1 and 2 of the Act of April 14, 2000 on International Agreements stipulates that supplying the President, by the minister responsible for foreign affairs, acting on the basis on the resolution of the Council of Ministers, with a draft decision on Poland’s withdrawal from the EU is possible only with prior consent granted in a statute enacted by the Sejm and the Senate with a simple majority of votes in the presence of at least half of the statutory members of each chamber. This provision, adopted in 2010, has been reminded with fear in last years, due to the consistent anti-constitutional and anti-European policy applied by the Sejm’s prevailing political parties, by the government and by the President alike, supported by the subordinate organs and institutions of the state, including the Constitutional Tribunal, which is sometimes aptly named as an actual and even legal gradual polexit. The first objective of the paper is to reconstruct the legislative history of the aforementioned regulation on the procedure of Poland’s withdrawal from the EU and the competing legislative proposals in that matter that were formulated parallelly. The second objective is to defend the thesis stating that for the decision on Poland’s withdrawal from the EU, Art. 90 of the Constitution, construed a contrario (and not Art. 89), should apply, where in order to pass the statute granting consent for renunciation of an international agreement referred to herein, it is necessary to have a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers, in the presence of at least half of their statutory numbers, and where granting of such a consent may also be passed by a nationwide referendum.

Terminology of the political system of the Wolof people in Le navigazioni di Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto e Pietro di Sintra (c. 1465) by Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto

The paper deals with Le navigazioni di Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto e Pietro di Sintra, an account written circa 1465 by Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto, a young Venetian merchant in the service of Henry the Navigator, describing his two voyages to the region of Senegambia taken in 1454 and 1455. The aim of the paper is to analyse the terminology used by Ca’ da Mosto to describe the political system of the Wolof people as well as the factors that influenced his decisions in this regard. In this context, special attention will be paid to those fragments of the account which deal with the connection between the ruler and the state, the relationships of dependency between the Wolof countries as well as the socio-economic conditions in these countries.