General Constitutional Clauses: Between the Legislative Construction and Its Implementation

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present and analyse in terms of theory of law the general reference clauses, which, as a normative construction, are also formulated in the provisions of constitutional law. Within the framework of these analyses, apart from conceptual issues, the constructions used in three 20th-century Polish Constitutions (of 1921, of 1935, of 1952), created in different political conditions, are presented. All of them were rather restrained as regards the number of extra-legal references, although the 1952 Constitution added to this practice an ideologized language of a legal text. It is not possible to compare it - either in the context of the number of clauses or the breadth of references - with the Constitution of 1997. The main parts of this paper include a linguistic, normative and systematizing analysis of the references contained in the current Polish Constitution, as well as an indication of their implementation effects. On this basis, selected aspects of the titular relation between the enactment and application of constitutional reference clauses are determined.