The main purpose of this paper is the presentation of Harvard Law School scholar James Bradley Thayer and his famous article The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, published in Harvard Law Review in 1893. Thayer formulated therein his theory of judicial restraint based on the formula unconstitutionality beyond reasonable doubt. This theory influenced such eminent judges and scholars like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Learned Hand and, last but not least, Felix Franfurter, and is still broadly discussed in contemporary American constitutional jurisprudence. In conclusion the author proposes to make American experiences in this area useful for the current debate concerning Polish constitutional crisis.

The tension between democratic principles and religious doctrines has long been a subject of scholarly inquiry. In recent years, when “religion is back with a vengeance” and there are serious religious overtones of the current illiberal upsurge, the issue of exploitation of religious passions for political ends requires renewed and sustained scholarly attention. Therefore, political efforts and successes of Christian Right in the United States should be a major contemporary field of inquiry, especially if one considers the rivalry between the constitutional order and the religious one, and also the faith-based reality divide within the American society.

This article explores hidden sources of the exploitation of religious passions in the U.S. constitutional practice in four periods: 1) after the Civil War, when religiously reinforced social conservatism developed in the South; 2) in the 1950s and 1960s, when the business elite and conservative clergymen promoted the role of religion in public life in order to fight the New Deal political order; 3) in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Republican Party formed an alliance with conservative Christians; 4) in the Donald Trump’s era which culminated in the U.S. Capitol attack of 2021. I argue that these periods had two common features: the racist basis and the U.S. Supreme Court’s involvement in the power struggles. I suggest that a peculiar symbiotic relation has developed between the Supreme Court and the Christian Right and I also discuss three possible jurisprudential effects of this relation: the enhanced legitimacy of the Supreme Court in religious affairs; the Supreme Court as a channel of institutional access of churches and religious groups to policy making; and also some unintended consequences of infusing the law with ideas rooted in illiberal social order.

The text deals with the complementarity of information rights with respect to the active electoral right, using the example of the right of access to public information and the right to protection of personal data. These two information rights well reflect the most relevant aspects of an individual’s information status. At the same time, these rights interestingly interact with the exercise of the active electoral right. The article explains the concept of “information rights” and the concept of the sovereignty of the people, and identifies the obligations incumbent on public authorities to ensure the exercise of information rights and the active electoral right. From the analyses carried out, there are strong interactions between the right of access to public information and the active electoral right. The situation is different in the case of the right to protection of personal data. The analysis makes it possible to claim that the relationship between the right of access to public information and the active electoral right as political rights is more intense due to the goals set for them. The right to protection of personal data belongs to personal rights. Its exercise involves complying with a number of procedures for processing personal data and securing personal data in technical and organizational terms. Procedures defining the principles of personal data processing are currently described primarily in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The joint application of the Election Code and personal data protection procedures is not easy, and the Polish regulation in this regard is sometimes unclear and insufficient.

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.

In the referenced case, the defendants were charged with insulting the monument of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, located in Kopernik Square in Włocławek, Poland, by gluing an offensive poster thereto. The poster resembled an obituary, and its content contained vulgar words. It also contained references to civil disobedience. The defendants' action resulted from the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal which abolished one of the conditions for the legality of the abortion. The court, finding that the conditions for using this institution had been met, conditionally discontinued the criminal proceedings against the accused for a probationary period of one year. The court's balancing of the need to protect the freedom of expression of the accused and the worship of the person commemorated on the monument and the feelings of people for whom this figure has a symbolic meaning should be assessed as correct, based on the judgment of the ECtHR in the case of Handzhiyski v. Bulgaria of April 6, 2021.

In the book State Libility for Unlawful Action of Public Authority: Constitutional Law Study its autor Michał Ziółkowski presents an autonomus consitutional interpretation of art. 77 of the Polish Constitution. This is deep study of the constitutional subjective right, unlaful action of the public authority in consitutional meaning and context, constitutional damages, all constitutional requirements of the State liability, including responsibility for action of the Polish Constitutional Court. The review book is important within the framework of the consitutional doctrine and has a fundamental influence on the interpretation and the application of legal provisions concerning State liability.