Individual Application to the Constitutional Court of Poland

Year 2024, Issue: 75, 33 - 52, 06.01.2025

Hatice Derya Ormanoğlu Duranlıoğlu

https://doi.org/10.26650/annales.2024.75.0002

Abstract

The Constitutional Court was established in Poland in 1985, a country that adopted the European model constitutional justice system. Individual application to the Constitutional Court (Constitutional complaint), which is an important mechanism in the protection of individual rights and freedoms and also ensures the development of the Constitutional Court jurisprudence, was made possible for the first time in Poland with the Constitution that came into force in 1997. The Constitutional Tribunal Act, which was adopted in the same year with the 1997 Polish Constitution, contains regulations regarding individual application. Because of the judicial reforms carried out in 2016, the Constitutional Tribunal Act Law was changed. The Act of Organisation of the Constitutional Tribunal and the Mode of Proceedings Before the Constitutional Tribunal, which is the most recent act put into force on January 3, 2017, includes up-to-date regulations regarding individual applications. The review authority of the Polish Constitutional Court regarding individual applications differs from that in Turkey. In the Republic of Poland, when an application is made to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed in the constitution have been violated, the legal regulation itself is subject to unconstitutionality review. The reasons for choosing Poland in this study include the fact that the Constitutional Court was established in Poland before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc; that it sets an example for other Eastern European countries; and that legal regulations can also be subject to individual application.

Keywords

Polish Constitutional Court, Individual Application, Constitutional Review, Constitutional Complaint, Fundamental Rights and Freedoms

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