In the commented judgment, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) once again approached the balancing of mutual trust and fundamental rights of individuals in asylum cases, particularly in Dublin III transfers of asylum seekers. The presumption of trust implies that all Member States are considered safe countries for third-country nationals. The presumption of compliance by Member States with their EU law obligations is rebuttable; however, it applies only when “systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions for applicants in that Member State occur, resulting in a risk of inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union”. In the judgment, the CJEU continues and strengthens the established jurisprudence regarding transfers under the Dublin III Regulation. The Court upheld the principle of mutual trust between EU Member States as essential for the functioning of the Dublin system, while identifying another category of serious, potentially systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions for applicants. Although the CJEU upheld the principle, in the commented judgment it introduced an interpretation of Article 3(2) of the Dublin III Regulation that requires competent authorities (courts) to conduct a more thorough verification of the legal and humanitarian situation in other Member States. The significance of the judgment is revealed in its impact on future jurisprudence. It also sheds light on recent changes in Polish asylum law.
This study examines the institution of the reminder introduced by the Act of 7 April 2017 amending the Act – Code of Administrative Procedure and certain other acts. The new remedy was intended to effectively reduce instances of failure to issue an act within the prescribed time or of conducting proceedings in a manner clearly contrary to the requirements arising from the principle of expeditious proceedings. In practice, however, the fundamental causes of inaction and delays in the conduct of administrative proceedings have not been eliminated, while new problems have emerged – this time related to the structure of the reminder itself. The study aims to assess the functioning of the reminder institution from the point of view of more than seven years of practice in its application and to identify practical problems in this area.
This article explores the pervasive phenomenon of visual clutter in Poland. Its primary objective is to advance philosophical, empirical, and legal arguments supporting the introduction of restrictions on the placement of advertising installations in public space. It demonstrates that such measures are grounded in well-established axiological and constitutional principles within the Polish legal framework. The analysis indicates that efforts to reduce visual clutter necessarily entail limitations on certain individual rights, in particular the right to private property and the freedom of economic activity. In this context, the article engages with a fundamental issue: the tension between private and public interests. It argues that the protection of the aesthetic quality of public space constitutes a legitimate basis for according primacy to the public interest. Ultimately, the article contends that restricting outdoor advertising serves to align public spaces with the principles of W. Tatarkiewicz’s “Great Theory of Western Aesthetics”, emphasizing order, harmony, and proportionality.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been repeatedly accused of employing a sophisticated strategy of lawfare, i.e., a strategic and abusive application of international law to further its aims, especially in connection with South China Sea territorial disputes. This article aims to challenge this widely held view. It first introduces the concept of lawfare and highlights its inherent analytical problems. Then it describes the Chinese historical relationship with international law and doctrinal approach to lawfare. Finally, the article examines the maritime dispute between the PRC and the Philippines that was referred to the Permanent Court of Arbitration to demonstrate that there is little evidence that China engages in methodical warfare, though the PRC undeniably tries to shape the norms of public international law for its own benefit.
This methodological paper reflects on the problems of research about the relationship between oppressed social groups and the legal system. The starting point is to notice that oppression is not addressed but is rather reinforced by the legal system. Besides, the stronger the oppression that is mediated by social structures or based on the direct exercise of power, the more important it is to use low intervention, particularly qualitative methods. In the first part of the paper, we focus on two main areas: (1) general literature on socio-legal methodology and (2) reflections on specific sociological methods of law and their potential applications. We conclude that the problem raised by this paper appears only sporadically, mostly in connection with specific research projects. So, there are no elaborated answers or even in-depth discussions in the literature of the sociology of law about this methodological problem. Therefore, in the second part of the paper we attempt to provide a starting point for such a debate. We briefly present the methods that, with appropriate reflexivity, we consider suitable for researching the relationship between oppressed groups and the legal system. We discuss narrative interviewing, legal storytelling, legal ethnography, and critical discourse analysis, briefly describing these methods and providing concrete examples of research that demonstrate their suitability for this purpose.
The article analyzes the Italian Artificial Intelligence Law No. 132/2025, the first national implementation of the European AI Act. The Law No. 132/2025 introduces innovative sector-specific regulations in healthcare, employment, and the judiciary, and establishes new criminal law provisions addressing deepfakes and the use of artificial intelligence as an aggravating circumstance. At the same time, it is marked by serious structural weaknesses: it abandons regulatory autonomy, adopts the AI Act as a maximum standard, and creates a polycentric yet fragmented and underfunded supervisory model. Furthermore, it fails to address crucial issues such as environmental impact, civic participation, and the interaction with personal data protection. These shortcomings are exacerbated by broad legislative delegations, which contribute to legal uncertainty. Comparative legal analysis suggests that Law No. 132/2025 functions as a test of the limits of the AI Act’s flexibility and a potential driver of regulatory asymmetry within the Single Market of the European Union. Nevertheless, the Italian regulation serves as an important, albeit imperfect, laboratory for the future development of EU law on artificial intelligence
This paper examines cases related to the COVID-19 pandemic brought before the European Court of Human Rights, highlighting key procedural and substantive issues. In the analysed cases, many of the filed applications were dismissed as inadmissible due to a lack of victim status and a reliance on abstract concerns rather than actual violations. Substantively, the cases reveal a fundamental tension between individual rights and public health measures. While some applicants argued that state-imposed restrictions excessively limited their rights, others claimed that governments failed to provide adequate protection, particularly regarding health and safety. This dual perspective underscores the challenge of balancing fundamental rights in times of crisis. The analysis demonstrates that both excessive limitations and insufficient safeguards were framed as disproportionate, reflecting the complexity of state obligations during emergencies. The study ultimately sheds light on the Court’s role in adjudicating these disputes and the broader implications for human rights protection in future global crises
The article is intended to analyse the complementary nature of legal solutions concerning the financial management of district bar associations of attorneys-at-law in Poland and the budgets they adopt and implement. This matter is of significant importance due to the nature of the tasks performed by the self-governing professional organization of attorneys-at-law (samorząd radcowski) for which the budget and its funds constitute the material and financial basis. In this context, it is necessary to thoroughly analyse the essence, nature, and significance of the budget of this unit of the professional self-government of attorneys-at-law. The currently applicable regulations, both at the level of statutory legislation and in bye-laws, should be considered insufficient. The absence of terminological precision often makes it impossible to interpret the provisions without raising doubt. Due to the self-governing nature of the bar association, new regulations should arise from internal organizational norms issued under an explicit and precise statutory delegation contained in the Attorneys-at-Law Act.
The article analyses a new legislative solution introduced by the legislator as part of the real estate tax, which concerns the legal definition of a building. This definition specifies the object of taxation in real estate tax. As such, it is necessary to analyse it from the point of view of meeting the statutory requirement of specificity of the object of taxation, which is the purpose of this article. Achieving this goal requires, first and foremost, demonstrating a certain degree of autonomy on the part of the tax legislator within the new framework of this definition. Next, it was necessary to analyse the elements of the definition of a building from the point of view of fulfilling the statutory requirement of specificity of the object of taxation. The analysis confirms that, in the new definition of a building, the legislator has largely fulfilled the requirement to define the object of taxation in statutory terms. This is confirmed not only by the legislative technique used in the form of a legal definition, but above all by its normative form. In the new definition, the legislator refers to the Construction Law to a much lesser extent and, in addition, indicates two scopes of this definition, which significantly clarifies the object of taxation.
This paper discusses the effects of amendments to Article 256 of the Criminal Code, in particular the addition of a provision prohibiting the public promotion of Nazi, communist or fascist ideology, or ideology inciting violence in order to influence political or social life. This amendment is a departure from previous criminal regulations, which, with the exception of the “Auschwitz lie” and incitement to hatred on national, ethnic, racial, and religious grounds (or lack of religious belief), did not interfere with freedom of expression. The author examines whether the new wording of Article 256 of the Criminal Code could lead to punishment for expressing nationalist views. To this end, the paper has been divided into two parts. The first part discusses the characteristics of Polish nationalist concepts (using a doctrinal and descriptive method). The second part examines the content of Article 256 of the Criminal Code (using dogmatic methods). As a result, the author argues that criminal liability will depend on whether a given “ideology” contains a component of consent to violence as a normal tool of political struggle, which, due to the need for specialist knowledge, will have to be entrusted to scientists.
This article analyses Article 36b of the Polish Atomic Law, which imposes an obligation to use of either practically proven solutions and technologies or those confirmed safe through tests, research, and analyses in nuclear facility design and construction. The scientific problem addressed is the lack of precise guidelines for verifying proven technologies and the dilemma of balancing nuclear safety with technological progress, a critical issue for Poland’s burgeoning nuclear energy sector. The aim of the research is twofold: to reconstruct the legal norm within this provision, clarifying the concepts of “proven in practice” and “through tests, research, and analyses”, and to formulate de lege ferenda postulates for amendments. The main theses highlight the crucial role of the President of the Polish National Atomic Energy Agency, potential interpretative problems from the current wording, and the need for clearer verification methods for novel technologies, drawing comparisons with international frameworks. The originality of the research lies in providing the first comprehensive analysis of this specific Polish requirement, uniquely contrasted with the Convention on Nuclear Safety and International Atomic Energy Agency standards. The scope of research is national, EU-wide, and international, focusing on Polish law while gaining insights from broader nuclear safety frameworks. This article offers significant cognitive value for both legal science and practice, illuminating regulatory gaps and proposing solutions to enhance nuclear safety and technological advancement in Poland and internationally.
The circumstances in which the municipal council, as the decision-making and controlling body in the municipality, is dissolved are exceptional situations. They can be found in the provisions of the Act of 8 March 1990 on municipal self-government, as well as in the provisions of the Act of 15 September 2000 on local referendum. If there are grounds for dissolving the municipal council, it is necessary for the President of the Council of Ministers to appoint a person who will act as the dissolved municipal body. The applicable statutory provisions are imprecise and the solutions they contain are far from the ideas of a rational legislator. Their interpretation leads to an indication of the extent to which it is possible to make them more precise and to provide more detail in the legal regulations, which would contribute to their more effective application in practice.
This article presents the issue of using the institution of self-control in a situation where a complaint to the administrative court concerns resolutions of the constitutive bodies of local government units. As part of the legal analysis of the institution in question, the author paid special attention to its constraints with significant limitations, which constitute the limits of its admissibility. The paper also indicates practical aspects and nodal problems resulting from the various mechanisms used, which, due to its heterogeneity, have been subjected to in-depth empirical analysis and constructive criticism. The article presents the results of research carried out on the basis of the evaluation of numerous responses to requests for disclosure of public information, formulated by voivodeship marshals, poviat starosts and city presidents. The study is therefore scientific and research and practical in nature. The results of the research performed during the interpretation of the research findings are original and innovative, as such studies have not been conducted so far. This makes this study a valuable source of knowledge for representatives of science and practice.
The article aims to examine the issue of justifying absences from compulsory classes by both parents of minor students and adult students themselves. The issue was brought forward in light of the lack of definitive legislative direction on the matter. It frequently gives rise to incorrect interpretations and non-compliant practices within the field of education. Given the foregoing, the main thesis of the article calls for clear and unambiguous legal solutions, in particular addressing the following questions: Who is authorised to justify a student’s absence and in what form? Can submitted excuse letters be validated? Who, and based on what criteria, can conduct such validation? What tools should be used to make it happen? The article is a scientific and research work. The research on this subject is original, which permits the assumption that the text may offer substantial contributions to both scholarly discourse and educational practice. Although the impact of the findings is chiefly national in scope, the absence of legal mechanisms for validating students’ excuse letters is a widespread issue across numerous EU member states. As such, the solutions proposed in the article may be of value within European educational contexts.
The guardian of a person whose whereabouts are unknown is not only responsible for representing the absent party/participant in civil proceedings until they join the ongoing proceedings, but is also obligated to establish that person’s address for service, unknown to the parties to the proceedings and the court hearing the case. Until the judicial correspondence is served to the absent party/participant, the guardian performs all necessary acts in the case on behalf and for the benefit of that person. The guardian of a person whose whereabouts are unknown is not entitled to expect public institutions or authorities to provide information about the absent party/participant in the proceedings. In practice, the actions of guardians related to determining the whereabouts of the party/participant being represented may therefore boil down to searching for such a person in the field or on social networking sites, which may raise legitimate doubts in light of the professional ethics standards applicable to attorneys-at-law and advocates or the provisions on personal data protection.
Today, due to the dynamics of development, state institutions need to interact both vertically and horizontally to efficiently manage the challenges of the present times. In addition to the internal and external communication of an institution, its relationship with the public is also very important. In countries with weak institutions, as is the case of Albania, where the tradition of relations with the public started very late, specifically after the 1990s, an effort to give the proper weight to this process is noticed. Reports of many international institutions indicate that Albania has had many difficulties for internal coordination between institutions and for proper interaction with the public. The fact that relations with the public entered very late in the communication strategies of the Albanian state institutions has made the necessary changes for the correct implementation of their internal and external communication to be made with difficulty. Precisely this aspect is addressed in this study, focusing on the Prime Minister’s Office of Albania and the paths it has taken to avoid the lack of communication in line with other institutions and the public. The centralization of this process necessitates that the right units be set up in the organization chart of state institutions and the right people be placed, trained with the latest communication methodologies through digitalization. The case study presented in this article concerns the Prime Minister’s Office of Albania and the ways it has followed to avoid the lack of communication in line with other institutions and the public.
Since the term of economic copyright protection is limited and trade mark right can be extended indefinitely, there may be a desire to artificially extend copyright protection by means of trade mark rights. The main goal of the article is to assess whether this idea is feasible. Although there is a different function and scope of copyright and trade mark right, the possibility of copyright “prolongation” cannot be excluded a priori. It seems that mainly the original purpose of the work as such and the manner of its exploitation during the term of copyright protection are of crucial importance for the possibility of “extending” copyright protection by means of a trade mark registration after the expiration of copyright protection. However, it should be borne in mind that there are some obstacles for the trade mark registration or grounds for its invalidation resulting from the European Union Trade Mark Regulation 2017/100, that are especially difficult to overcome in the case of public domain artwork depicted in a trade mark, i.e., lack of distinctiveness, application in bad faith, inconsistency with public policy or accepted principles of morality.
Housing policy is one of the most significant challenges for local government in Poland. According to the Act of 21 June 2001 on the protection of tenants’ rights, municipal housing stock and on the amendment of the Civil Code, one of the tasks of the municipality (Pol. gmina) is to establish conditions for satisfying the housing needs of the local community. The implementation of the housing support instruments that take into account the specific needs of elderly people should be the primary objective of housing policy in the local government in Poland. The main objective of this study is a legal analysis of the applicable normative regulations on the conduct by public authorities of policies aimed at meeting the housing needs of citizens, with particular emphasis on the needs of elderly people. The subject of the analysis is also to examine the proposed legislative solutions in Poland, aiming to support, using municipal housing stock, elderly people with the ownership right to a dwelling and living in a building not equipped with a lift on the fourth above-ground level or higher.
In the commented judgment, the Supreme Court considered, among other things, if a situation in which the claimant formulates one claim, basing it on various sets of facts, could be recognized as an objective accumulation of claims. Assuming that the dissimilarity of the alternative factual grounds entails the emergence of two or more procedural claims, the Court concluded that the multiplicity of claims (objective accumulation of claims) occurs when the claims differ from each other either in terms of the content of the claims, or in terms of sets of factual circumstances which justify them, or simultanously by both of these elements. When submitting multiple claims, the claimant should specify precisely not only the content of each claim and the factual circumstances justifying it, but also specify the relationship between the accumulated claims. While the detailed threads of the quoted position should be partially approved, the underlying view assuming that the submission of one claim with multiple factual justification is equivalent to objective accumulation of procedural claims should be critically considered. This view does not seem to take into account the basic assumptions of the two-part – as is commonly accepted – construction of the subject of a civil trial, and at the same time it remains in a collision with the rules of procedural efficiency, especially in terms of the requirements for precision and accuracy in marking the claim, and, consequently, in terms of the effectiveness and correctness of further procedural steps aimed at recognizing the case.
The Supreme Court’s judgment of 16 May 2018 (V KO 26/18) concerns the issue of recognition of a new expert opinion, prepared on the basis of the same evidence as the expert opinion issued in the course of the court proceedings covered by the motion for reopening, and which only contains different conclusions. The Supreme Court stated that such an opinion should be considered as new evidence, justifying the resumption of proceedings, if the different conclusions were drawn on the basis of new research methods previously unknown to the experts giving their opinions. The authors fully endorse the above view, pointing out that scientific and technological progress allows for the development of more and more accurate examination procedures, thus creating the possibility of examining evidence and clarifying cases even many years after the crime was committed. Therefore, there is a high probability that there will be cases in which the achievements of modern science and technology will allow for the formulation of completely different conclusions from those made in validly concluded criminal trials. In the commentary, three criteria are formulated, the fulfilment of which allows one to consider a newly drawn up expert opinion as new evidence warranting the resumption of proceedings: 1) the preparation of a new opinion by a new expert or a new team of experts (often an interdisciplinary team), even if they would have given an opinion based on the same evidence and traces that had already been the subject of examinations and expert opinions based on them; 2) the use of new research methods, previously unknown or not used in the original opinion, as a result of developments in science and technology, enabling a more complete and thorough analysis of the research material; 3) the adoption of different conclusions by the experts from the research carried out thanks to the use of innovative research methods which were unknown or not used in the original opinion.
