Main Theses of the Papers Presented at the Conference “The Standing Orders of the Sejm in Parliamentary Practice” on 11 January 2000

The article presents the main theses of the papers presented by Leszek Garlicki, Marcin Kudej, Jerzy Góral and Marek Zubik. The first two speakers referred primarily to the features of the Standing Orders of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland and their place in the Polish legal system. The Standing Orders of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, adopted as a resolution, express the organisational autonomy of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland and, in accordance with the Polish constitutional tradition, remain a uniform, permanent and normative act. The Standing Orders of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland are neither an act of universally binding law nor an act of internal law: they are a special act of a mixed nature. It follows from the Constitution of the Republic of Poland that the Sejm of the Republic of Poland is obliged to enact and maintain its Standing Orders in force as well as to ensure that their scope of regulation corresponds to that specified in Article 112, Article 61(4) and Article 123(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. In all matters that are excluded from the scope of regulation of the Standing Orders of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland by virtue of the specific provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland – despite falling, as far as their subject matter is concerned, within the scope of regulation of the Standing Orders – a reference to an Act of Parliament covers only the regulation of specific issues related to the particularities of a given reference, while all other issues may be regulated by the Standing Orders of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland. Jerzy Góral and Marek Zubik, on the other hand, focused on the problems related to the structure of the Standing Orders of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland and their specific content, and proposed appropriate amendments.