This article deals with the judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal, issued during the financial crisis, concerning citizen’s social rights.

Without doubt, the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgments issued during the financial crisis took into account the importance of state’s balanced budget. The Constitutional Tribunal applied and promoted this principle in process of balancing of the constitutional principles. Despite being controversial, the judgments in question were issued in a particular situation and were a consequence of a rational discussion. Each case of balancing of principles of law by a constitutional court takes place in a concrete moment, and therefore is not abstract in its character.

The author explores the value that the Constitutional Tribunal ascribes to balanced budget and to the goods that were endangered during the crisis, such as valorisation of pensions. The article shows that the Constitutional Tribunal treated balanced budget as a principle of law and interpreted it narrowly. In this sense, budget balance signified a balance between the income and expenditure of the state. Such an interpretation of the balanced budget led to the understanding of the balanced budget as an economic indicator, that is to say as a type of financial bill of the state.

The author argues that this understanding of the balanced budget (as a balance between the income and expenditures of the state) – in contrast to Constitutional Tribunal’s understanding – does not have a rank of a constitutional principle. In such case, balanced budget is an instrument of state’s economic policy, or has a character of a rule of law. The author states that in constitutional law the principle of balanced budget should be understood as a responsible economic policy of the public authorities. In this sense, balanced budget is anchored in the principle of common good (Article 1 of the Polish Constitution). A (responsible) economic policy of the state is one of the dimensions of this common good.

The provisions contained in the constitution have different characteristics. Specific problems arise in connection with interpretation of those provisions which contain standards. Traditional canons of interpretation (linguistic, systematic and purposive interpretation) fail, since constitutional standards refer to essentially contested concepts. The understanding of such concepts as equality, human dignity or social market economy depends on the accepted political philosophy. A deficit of legitimacy of decisions arises, since decisions based on a particular political philosophy are challenged by adherents of competing political philosophies. Such a deficit may be reduced by reference to the conception of “incompletely theorized agreements”. It may be demonstrated that a dispute relating to an abstract principle or value does not preclude the possibility of reaching a consensus with respect to a particular decision. Such a decision may be differently justified on the basis of different political philosophies.

The article presents briefly the discussion about problem of the so-called creative (law-making) interpretation of the Constitution. Author indicates that previous concepts of the creative interpretation offered by the Polish legal doctrine did not deliver any noncontroversial criteria, which could mark difference between declaratory and creative constitutional argumentation. This problem is also connected with the political question about judicial activism and the limits (legitimacy) of the third power, ergo the questions that are currently arising during the ongoing constitutional crisis in Poland. For that reason the alternative solution is proposed, namely to perceive the stable interpretative practice (for instance a line of precedents, or settled case law, etc.) as the cutoff point for the declaratory/creative interpretation. From this point of view every unjustified (revolutionary instead of the evolutionary) change of settled interpretation of the Constitution should be evaluated as invalid. Nevertheless, presented conception is not fully elaborated and have some weak points, i.e. matters which need to be developed to make it applicable in the interpretation practice. Especially there is lack of the analogous (precedential) doctrine in the Polish legal culture, which excludes possibility to precisely indicate the state of stable interpretation practice from one side, and proper correction of the previous case law on the other.

The problem of the relation between constitution and slavery is still present in contemporary American constitutionalism. The scholars are divided into three main groups: prosecutors, vindicators and historicists. The author considers this complicated question on the example of Thomas Jefferson and his thought. As we know, he was one of the Founding Fathers and the slaves owner at the same time. The main purpose of this article is the explanation of this ambiguity, which seems to be not only personal but first of all constitutional. For starting point the author takes the famous William Lloyd Garrison’s formulation – constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell”.

In the discussed judgment, the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw erroneously dismissed an action brought against the Chancellery of the President of Poland for its failure to act. Requested by the applicant, the legal opinions concerning the election of the judges of the Constitutional Tribunal in 2015 – the drafting of which had been commissioned by the Chancellery – constituted public information. Contrary to the stance taken by the Court, the first and last names of the authors of the opinions were also subject to disclosure.