This article provides an outline as to the functioning of “Amparo,” a Mexican mechanism of constitutional control. From the time of its introduction to Mexican constitutionalism in 1847, it has established itself as a robust constitutional control mechanism and has profoundly influenced Latin American constitutionalism and other countries in establishing similar mechanisms. This paper provides a summary of its evolution, functioning, and main procedural aspects.

The article discusses the issue of the place and presence of women in the public sphere, and tries to answer the question of how these matters are impacted by the institution of the Constitutional Tribunal. Applying the method of discourse analysis, I have examined the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s decisions and looked into the media discussion, with both revealing dominant trends regarding women’s rights in Polish constitutionalism. Using the category of counterpublics, I also cover emancipation movements important on account of women’s rights and their presence in the public domain. I also address the common myths concerning the Constitutional Tribunal. There are also mentions of room for the materialisation of emancipation processes in Polish constitutionalism.

Even though the proportionality principle is well-established for judicial review in matters pertaining to human rights in modern constitutional law in numerous jurisdictions, it has recently become subject to a growing tide of criticism. The article aims to describe and critically analyze the main arguments raised by the opponents of using proportionality as the tool for adjudicating conflicts of fundamental rights. After briefly describing the typical and the most common structure of the proportionality test as it is used in constitutional law, the author would present – and then dismiss – the three most significant allegations towards the proportionality analysis, namely: the problem of incommensurability, the alleged proportionality’s moral neutrality as well as the scope of judicial discretion that is claimed to be too wide according to some of proportionality’s opponents.

This paper reviews the work of Cass R. Sunstein who is a renowned and widely quoted legal scholar and a very prolific writer on a wide range of subjects. I outline herein some themes and ideas expressed in over a dozen C.R. Sunstein’s books that were published between 1993 and 2017. As the title suggests, an emphasis is placed on issues of constitutional relevance. Aiming to place Sunstein’s body of work within a larger context I trace a considerable shift in his approach to political problems and challenges from a purely legal to a more nuanced and multi-dimensional one. Accordingly I present Sunstein’s views on such issues as the partiality of constitutions, incompletely theorized agreements, judicial minimalism, the ideological component of judging, the cost of rights, and group polarization. The works of this contemporary Publius show that pursuing constitutional law in a practical way is much more than study in linguistics or compiling a constitutional court’s decisions. Cass R. Sunstein’s extensive oeuvre provides a rich material for devising new constitutional solutions to real social problems.

The paper indicates the most important arguments raised by the participants in the dispute concerning the possibility of control by the administrative courts of decisions of the President of the Republic of Poland on the refusal to appoint a judge and an attempt to make a substantive evaluation of them. In my opinion, the refusal to appoint a judge, as well as refusal to accept the judge’s position under the amended Act on the Supreme Court (SC) should be strictly exceptional and in principle be justified at the constitutional level, which should be seen as the duty of the President to ensure compliance with the Constitution. Both of these resolutions should contain the motives of the President, which would make this act, with all its arbitrariness, more transparent. This is important not only from the point of view of the person concerned, but this also has an important social dimension. The public has the right to know, not only which candidates, who met the requirements for the appointment as a judge and were recommended by the National Council of the Judiciary of Poland (NCJ), were not appointed by the President, but also what reasons were at the heart of such a decision of the Head of State.

The so-called „Beasts Act" is a legal regulation, which deals with particularly dangerous perpetrators convicted by valid sentences for many years before its entry into force and concerns the proceedings against them after serving their prison sentences. Its enactment and entry into force was accompanied by a lot of legal controversy, which ultimately led to its appeal to the Constitutional Tribunal. The Constitutional Tribunal held that the inclusion of people regarded as particularly dangerous does not violate constitutional guarantees of individual rights. The Court said that the placement of the Centre is not of a criminal nature, but only administrative and it is not ruling a second time in the same case. The article critically refers to the thesis of the Constitutional Tribunal and its argumentation.