Konstytucja z 2 kwietnia 1997 r. jako podstawa systemu ustrojowego III Rzeczypospolitej

Abstract

He contemporary system of government of the Republic of Poland is based on the Constitution of April 2nd, 1997. This fundamental law is characterized by all features allowing to clearly separate it from other legislative acts valid in Poland. As such it contains: 1) specific content regulating basic principles and institutions of the Polish system, 2) specific form which can be viewed especially in essentially difficult procedure of constitutional amendments, 3) supreme position in the system of sources of commonly binding law. Special attention should be brought to the catalog of constitutional principles of the Polish system of government listed in chapter I of the Constitution (entitled: The Republic). This catalog firstly includes the fundamental principles nowadays commonly applied in democratic states: principle of the nation’s supreme power, balance and separation of powers principle and principle of political pluralism. As a consequence, set of those principles establishes a fundament for the entire system of government of the Republic. Chapter II is the most extensive one in the Constitution and it precisely describes the legal status of an individual in a state. An important novelty should be noted in the separation of the constitutional measures for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms within the chapter. Such perspective should also be kept when analyzing chapter III of the 1997 Constitution, which is de facto the first one from all the Polish constitutions to comprehensively regulate the system of the sources of law. In separate chapters (X and XI) the issues of public finances and extraordinary measures are regulated. Presently binding fundamental law, just like constitutions of other countries, most extensively focuses on the system of supreme state organs. It is based on the separation and balance of the legislative, executive and judicial powers, and at the same time each of those powers has been vested in different state organs. Mutual relations between the legislative and executive powers are shaped in the Constitution and indicate the dominance of a parliament (Sejm especially) over the executive allowing for defining the governmental system in Poland as rationalized system of parliamentary government