19 lipca 2023 r. Trybunał Konstytucyjny wydał przełomowy wyrok o sygnaturze akt SK 14/21, w którym uznał definicję legalną budowli, zawartą w art. 1a ust. 1 pkt 2 ustawy o podatkach i opłatach lokalnych, za niezgodną z Konstytucją. Dotychczas istniały liczne kontrowersje i niejasności w interpretacji tej definicji, co prowadziło do powstania rozbieżnych linii orzeczniczych sądów administracyjnych i sporów w doktrynie. W orzeczeniu Trybunał Konstytucyjny zdecydował, że odwoływanie się w przepisach podatkowych do przepisów prawa budowlanego jest niezgodne z zasadami określoności prawa podatkowego i poprawnej legislacji. Zasugerował również potrzebę dokonania zmiany definicji budynku.
W artykule przeanalizowane zostały najważniejsze praktyczne problemy, które występowały w ramach stosowania definicji budowli w dotychczasowym brzmie-niu, a także omówiono kluczowe orzeczenia Trybunału Konstytucyjnego oraz sądów administracyjnych w tym zakresie. Przedstawiona została także ocena wyroku Trybunału Konstytucyjnego z dnia 19 lipca 2023 r. o sygnaturze akt SK 14/21. Na końcu autor proponuje możliwe rozwiązania legislacyjne, które mogłyby być podstawą do stworzenia nowej definicji budowli – formułując tym samym postulaty le lege ferenda.

The amendment of Article 209 of the Polish Criminal Code, which took place on 31 May 2017 with the entry into force of the Act of 23 March 2017 on Amendments to the Criminal Code Act and the Act on Assistance to Persons Entitled to Maintenance (Journal of Laws of 2017, item 952), resulted in significant changes not only in the wording of the said article itself, but also in the picture of the statistical effects of pre-trial and court proceedings for the crime in question. From the very beginning, the said amendment raised questions and reservations among a substantial number of supporters of the established line of judicial decisions issued in the domain of criminal law. They considered it unfit to keep to the principles of adequacy and proportionality, as well as posing a threat to a significant – and ultimately destructive – increase in the burden on law enforcement authorities and the judiciary in general. At the same time, taking into account the main objectives and ideas of the amendment, which was intended in particular to improve the enforcement of maintenance obligations, it needs to be said that it proved ineffective and was actually a manifestation of penal populism.

The resolution of the municipal council on establishing the rules and conditions of situating the objects of street furniture, advertising boards and devices, gates, their dimensions, quality standards and kinds of materials, which they can be made of (it is called thelandscape resolution’ and also the ‘advertising resolution’ in literature), is a legal tool that serves landscape protection. However justified and necessary it is, the legal definition of terms that are basic for its content is accompanied by certain structural doubts that translate into the practice of applying law. In this article, the authors identify those flaws of the applicable regulation and make suggestions of their own legal solutions, especially introducing the legal definition of the term ‘advertising medium’ (replacing the current ‘advertising board’ and ‘advertising device’), as well as the definitions of individual types of media, to the legal order. The dogmatic and legal analysis is concluded with a draft of the appropriate legal provision.

The subject of this paper focuses on issues concerning criminal liability for a crime committed while inebriated or intoxicated. These issues, whose social significance is indisputable, continue to be controversial from the perspective of criminal law. One reason for this is the shortcomings of Article 31 § 3 of the Criminal Code, which serves as the basis to hold an offender who was in said state tempore criminis criminally liable. The purpose of this paper, however, is not so much to criticise the current legal solution as to offer a proposition de lege ferenda concerning a change in the wording of the said provision on the grounds of the reservations raised. The conclusions that lead to it are derived both from the dogmatic-legal analysis of the cited provision and from the empirical approach motivated by the psychopathological view of the state of intoxication, or the problem of (in)sanity of the perpetrator of a prohibited act. These issues are ingrained in the regulation contained in § 3 of Article 31 of the Criminal Code. It is the will of the criminal legislator for the scope of Article 31 of the Criminal Code to encompass a variety of states which may seem similar from a psychopathological point of view they, but actually require a different legal approach with regard to criminal-legal aspects and criminal policy, which this study aims to present.