ROLE OF LEGAL CERTANITY IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE OF LAW ON THE EXAMPLE OF POLAND
ROLE OF LEGAL CERTANITY IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE OF LAW ON THE EXAMPLE OF POLAND

Summary/Abstract: [...] It is a breach of the Constitution to establish vague, ambiguousregulations, which do not allow the citizens to foresee the legal consequences of theirconduct (judgement of the Constitutional Tribunal of 7 January 2004, K 14/03).The concept of the rule of law has been formulated by our civilisation a fewthousand years ago. Throughout the ages it has become a foundation for theconstruction and development of a concept of the state of law comprising the elementsof the state and the law. In the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997,the idea was directly expressed in Article 2 reading: “the Republic of Poland shall be ademocratic state ruled by law and implementing the principles of social justice”, and atthe same time – apart from other rules – it has become one of the principal rulesbinding in Poland. What is more, it has also become basis for deriving further rules oflaw out of it, and first of all the rule of legal certainty. In a democratic state of law legalcertainty is particularly important as it enables the individuals to prudently arrangetheir affairs such that the respective adjudications do not come as a surprise to themand that they are able to foresee the adjudication in the given circumstances. Therefore,if the rule is only a postulate in a certain state the individuals have no trust in law andhave no feeling of security as regards the law, and without that we cannot talk about thetrust in the state, or consequently, about a democratic state of law in general.

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