Prawo konstytucyjne – prof. Piotr Tuleja | WPiA UJ | Wykład 1 (08.10.2025)

Course Organization and Assessment

Professor Piotr Tuleja will teach constitutional law throughout the academic year. The course covers:

1. General principles of the political system
2. Human rights
3. The organization and functioning of the state’s highest organs

The syllabus defines the full examinable scope. Topics listed there remain binding even if they are not covered in lectures or tutorials. Students should attend tutorials to learn which parts of the many relevant legal acts are important. Passing the tutorials is presented as important preparation for mastering the course.

Department staff offer consultations, while student organizations and academic competitions provide additional opportunities to engage with the subject.

The written exam consists of a test, two descriptive questions, and a case to solve. One descriptive question concerns practical material; the other tests theoretical and lecture material, including topics that may not appear in the textbook. A good or very good tutorial result may exempt a student from one question. An oral exam may be available to students who perform exceptionally well in tutorials and demonstrate strong knowledge and interest.

Recommended textbooks and supplementary materials are not mandatory. The professor recommends a constitutional law textbook edited by him and notes that students also use Leszek Garlicki’s textbook. Case collections and compilations of legal acts may be recommended in tutorials.

Lectures are generally in person and are not routinely recorded. The lecture scheduled for the following week was to be held remotely. Any replacement online lecture might be recorded and made available on Teams. Presentation slides would also be posted to Teams, generally in batches.

Students who have already completed a sufficiently comparable constitutional law course at another university may be eligible for credit, depending on the course content. Related but non-equivalent subjects generally do not qualify.

What a Constitution Is and How the Idea Developed

In the legal sense, a constitution is more than a legal act containing important rules. A modern constitution is understood as a comprehensive public-law act that sets out the basic principles of state organization and, today, human rights. It is also intended to be the supreme law.

Older acts—such as medieval charters, privileges, and agreements between monarchs and estates—could contain important rights or political arrangements. However, they were often fragmentary, could mix public and private matters, and did not necessarily have supremacy over other law.

The Magna Carta is an important example of a historical constitutional act because it recognized freedoms for a group and bound the monarch to respect them. Polish privileges and other historical acts may also fit the older, broader understanding of constitutional acts.

The lecture identifies the Constitution of May 3 as Poland’s first modern constitution, distinguishing it from earlier, more limited constitutional acts.

Modern constitutionalism developed around the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The new constitutions aimed to define the state’s basic structure comprehensively and to replace or constrain monarchical absolutism. Principles associated with this change included:

• Popular or national sovereignty: Public authority derives from the nation rather than the monarch.
• Separation of powers: State powers are divided to limit concentrated authority.
• Representation and democratic government
• The rule of law

In the nineteenth century, constitutions primarily set out the organization of the state. Human rights appeared in many of them, but were often treated as declarations or principles whose practical meaning depended on ordinary legislation. The academic field concerned with these rules developed from “political law” into state law and, eventually, constitutional law as rights came to be treated as binding legal norms.

Postwar Constitutionalism and the Changing Status of Rights

After the Second World War, constitutionalism changed significantly: constitutional principles and rights were increasingly treated as legally binding, not merely as declarations or instructions to lawmakers.

Before this change, a constitution might proclaim equality, property rights, or universal suffrage while ordinary laws excluded some people from those rights. The lecture’s examples include racial inequality in the United States and restrictions on women’s property and voting rights in Europe.

Postwar constitutionalism sought to make the constitution genuinely supreme. If an ordinary law conflicts with a constitutional right or principle, the lower-level law should not prevail. This requires mechanisms to identify and address conflicts, including constitutional justice and judicial protection of rights.

The professor links this shift to the experience of totalitarianism. The Weimar Constitution contained democratic structures and an extensive catalogue of rights, but those rights were not effectively enforceable against measures taken after Hitler came to power. The broader lesson was that constitutional rights need practical legal force and safeguards.

The Polish Constitution of 1952 is cited as an example of a constitution whose important declarations could be undermined or bypassed in ordinary law, without an effective mechanism to prevent it.

Postwar constitutions also developed a non-positivist account of human rights: rights are described as inherent and inalienable, rather than as gifts granted solely by the state. At the same time, constitutions give those rights legal form. In Poland, Article 30 grounds human rights in the inherent and inalienable dignity of the person.

Multicentrism and Shared Constitutional Standards

From around the 1980s and 1990s, European integration and globalization contributed to what the professor calls multicentrism: several legal systems operate alongside one another, each with its own lawmaking institutions and courts.

In the Polish context, the lecture identifies three relevant systems:

• Polish law, based on the Polish Constitution and national institutions
• European Union law, interpreted and applied through EU institutions and the Court of Justice of the European Union
• The Council of Europe system, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights

The professor describes a further development as multiconstitutionalism: constitutional principles such as access to a court, judicial independence, and free and fair elections are understood through shared standards across states and supranational systems.

As an illustration, disputes over who qualifies as an independent judge cannot necessarily be settled by national legislation alone. The issue may also engage constitutional and European legal standards.

Constitutionalism in Poland

The professor cautions that Poland’s constitutional history is distinctive. The First Polish Republic had important political ideas and legal acts, but they did not directly form the basis of today’s constitutional tradition in the same way as later constitutional developments.

The Constitution of May 3 is a major national symbol and an important constitutional milestone. The professor notes, however, that some scholars question how fully it embodied modern principles such as national sovereignty, separation of powers, and judicial independence.

Poland was without an independent state during much of the nineteenth century, when many institutions central to modern constitutional law were being developed elsewhere. The professor argues that this limited Polish participation in those debates.

The history of modern Polish constitutionalism begins in earnest after 1918:

• The March Constitution established a democratic system and was strongly influenced by the French Third Republic.
• The April Constitution is characterized in the lecture as the constitution of an authoritarian state.
• The 1952 Constitution belonged to the period of the Polish People’s Republic, when constitutional principles could be subordinated to political realities.
• The transition beginning in 1989 brought amendments intended to establish a democratic and rule-of-law system.
• A Small Constitution was adopted in 1992, followed by the current Constitution in 1997.

The professor advises against treating claims about Poland’s constitutional tradition—often made around national anniversaries—as a substitute for examining how constitutional rules actually developed and operated.

Formal and Material Constitutions

The lecture distinguishes between a constitution in the formal sense and one in the material sense:

• A formal constitution is an act or set of acts designated as constitutional under a specified procedure. The form and adoption process determine its status.
• A material constitution is the body of rules that are substantively fundamental to the political system and human rights, regardless of where they are formally written.

The two do not always coincide. A formally designated constitution may omit important substantive principles; conversely, important constitutional rules may be found in several acts or in instruments outside a single constitutional document.

Examples discussed include countries with multiple constitutional acts or a broader constitutional framework, such as France’s constitutional bloc, and the United Kingdom’s uncodified constitutional arrangements. The professor uses the distinction to explain why constitutions can differ greatly in content and practical authority.

Why Constitutional Law Matters Beyond This Course

Constitutional principles underpin other fields of law. The lecture gives examples including freedom of contract in civil law, the requirement that crimes be defined by law in criminal law, and principles governing public administration.

Understanding these principles constitutionally helps students see law as a connected system rather than as isolated subjects. The professor concludes by previewing the next lecture’s focus: the principle of the supremacy of the constitution.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Speaker: Professor Piotr Tuleja, lecturer.
• Other voices: Unidentified students who ask questions during the lecture.
• Named authors and legal sources discussed or referenced: Ronald Dworkin; Ferdinand Lassalle; the Magna Carta; the Constitution of May 3; the American Constitution; the French constitutional tradition, including the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; the Weimar Constitution; the Polish Constitutions of 1921, 1935, 1952, and 1997; the 1992 Small Constitution; the European Convention on Human Rights; and the Treaty on European Union.