REFUSAL OF THE POLISH CONSTITUTIONAL TRIBUNALTO APPLY THE ACT STIPULATINGTHE CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW PROCEDURE

Abstract

One of the politically momentous and legally precedential constitutional problems of recent years which had to be faced by the Polish constitutional court has been the dispute whether it is possible to exclude the applicable statute defining the organization and procedure of the CT proceedings as a basis for adjudication. An analysis of the judgment of the Tribunal addressing that issue proves that the Polish constitutional court excluded the possibility that the same regulation could serve simultaneously as the object of control and the basis for control proceedings. This results from the essence of constitutional control of the law which in such arrangement of its key elements would simply repeal itself, i.e. would lead to its own invalidation. Subordination of constitutional judges exclusively to the Constitution extends to all actions they perform in serving their office and other consubstantial manifestations of exercising the power to judge. This is a derivative of jurisprudential responsibilities of the Tribunal, which * The article is a part of a research project financed by the National Science Centre under decision no. DEC–2014/13/B/HS5/01453 (artykuł jest częścią projektu badawczego finansowanego ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki przyznanych na podstawie decyzji nr DEC–2014/13/B/HS5/01453). Cf. e.g. CT judgments of: 3 December 2015, no. K 34/15, OTK ZU no. 11/A/2015, item 185, and 9 December 2015, no. K 35/15, OTK ZU no. 11/A/2015, item 186; 11 December 2016, no. K 39/16, OTK ZU no. A/2016, item 71, still awaiting publication in the Journal of Laws. ** Associate Professor Hab., PhD, The Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, piotradziewicz@gmail.com.