Public prosecution service has an irreplaceable place in the system of state authorities. However, the years of authoritarian regimes transformed independent public prosecution authorities existing on the territory of Slovakia and the Czech Republic into authorities protecting primarily the regime and persecuting all persons who were non-compliant with this regime. It was not until the fall of Communism in 1989 that a change came – a return to the original mission of public prosecution service (the independent protection of law). However, after the division of the Czechoslovakia in 1993 opinion plurality and the lack of a clear opinion on the nature of the public prosecution service resulted in the creation of two relatively different models – the model of prokuratúra in Slovakia and the model of státní zastupitelství in the Czech Republic. This is the reason why the author of this paper deals with the constitutional status of public prosecution service in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He analyses public prosecution service as a constitutional institution in general and then by comparison he focuses on constitutional regulation of the Slovak and Czech public prosecution service. The final parts contain brief evaluation of the current legal status and some possible considerations de constitutione ferenda.

In this article, the Polish institution of administrative entry to the area in order to carry out repair, maintenance or removal of failures of transmission equipment will be presented. It entitles to public-law interference in the constitutionally protected property right, under the condition that the determinants of its application have been met. The aim of the analysis is to indicate that the expropriation nature of this regulation, which is a specific form of expropriation, requires a strict interpretation of the premises leading to the restriction of the ownership for purposes related to transmission activity. An attempt will be made to demonstrate that the restriction of the ownership made on the basis of an administrative decision meets the expropriation standards applicable in the Polish legal system. The presented issues are not only of purely theoretical importance, but will also be used in the application of legal regulations by both public administration authorities and transmission companies applying for a permission.

The article is the second in a series of papers that seek to present and analyse the meaning ascribed to the notions of ‘gambling’ and ‘gambling games’ in the gambling law provisions of selected European countries as well as to confront the normative meaning of this concept with gambling characteristics from the perspective of social sciences. The analysis covered provisions of those English-speaking countries in which the notion of ‘gaming’ is used to describe the aggregate category of gambling activities, i.e. Malta and Ireland. The article mainly uses methods of comparative law. The presentation of the characteristics of gambling from the perspective of social science draws on the scientific output of researchers in the field. The studies carried out justified the thesis that the scopes of the notion of ‘gaming’ in the gambling law provisions of Malta and Ireland are substantially different. On the one hand, the situation results from different traditions in the regulation of gambling activities. On the other, it reflects the attitude public authorities currently adopt both to the activities bearing the features of gambling and to such games in which the outcome is determined by the player’s skill but which might pose a threat similar to those related to gambling. In both Malta and Ireland, the normative meaning of ‘gaming’ extends beyond the meaning that is ascribed to the notion of ‘gambling’ in social science.

The aim of the article is to offer proposals for reforming and speeding up health care in Ukraine, in particular by comparing the current system with a decentralized system. The methodology of this research follows basic social science methods (formal analysis, inductive method, deductive method, analogy, synthesis, etc.). With these methods, we address the issues of the health care reform in Ukraine. The article explores the issue of improving the health care in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government is carrying out two important reforms – a health care reform and a decentralization reform that includes changes in the municipal government. These two reforms have a huge potential for improving Ukraine’s health care system. Such potential remains largely untapped.

The publication examines the legal nature of wars, looks into the law of war genesis, reviews its conventions, as well as identifies the aim, objectives, causes together with the consequences of Russia’s military aggression on February 24, 2022; it provides a testimony on the war of aggression against Ukraine and identifies its threats to post-war international law and order. The aim of the article is to determine the background, nature, fundamentals and nature of the war the Russian Federation launched on February 24, 2022 against Ukraine within the context of confrontation with the values of Western democracy. Historical-legal dialectical, comparative-legal and system-structural methods, as well as methods of formal logic (induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, abstraction and concretization, etc.) were used to study the issues. The application of these research methods entails a cross-sectoral scientific nature.
Wars have accompanied the entire history of mankind. Since the 17th century the theoretical foundations of the law of war have been laid, which enshrined in international laws and customs of warfare (Geneva Conventions, Hague Convention, etc.) since the 19th century, thus forming the international humanitarian law. After World War II, violations of the latter by the belligerent party are viewed by the world community no less harshly than the mere war. The paper questions the purpose, reasons, conditions and intermediate consequences of the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Obviously, the military aggression and the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022 marked the beginning of the de facto war, under a specific formal definition by a Russian official as a “special military operation” instead of naming it an attempt to avoid legal responsibility for war crimes committed in Ukraine. The article analyses the aggressive nature of this war on the part of the Russian Federation, demonstrates numerous violations of international law conventions by the Russian armed forces during the military invasion and temporary occupied territories in Ukraine. It emphasizes that the law of war has always been replaced by signing a peace treaty and relevant international agreements, which entails the obligation to severe the political, economic, and legal responsibility of the state violating international humanitarian law. The paper reviews the key institutions and legal tools for bringing the Russian Federation authorities to justice for the war crimes committed in Ukraine. So far, the President of Ukraine, the Supreme Council of Ukraine, and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine have managed to apply legitimate international legal
mechanisms, primarily the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council, to prosecute Russia for violating the international humanitarian law and committing war crimes in Ukraine. At the same time, on the Ukrainian territories currently liberated from the Russian army’s occupation (Bucha, Gostomel, Irpin, etc.), it is already possible to implement a special mechanism of justice, which consists in the collaboration between national and international experts: specialists, investigators, prosecutors, and judges to collect objective and impartial evidence of gross violations of international law and war conventions in Ukraine. It is obvious that for Ukraine today both the victory and just punishment for the committed and continuing committed war crimes on its territory are important. The aftermath of World War II’s “Never Again” now requires, as never before, its effective guarantee and protection

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislator decided to increase the capacity of public administration to operate. Therefore, the provisions of the special act introduced additional tools for the voivode. As a result, a special type of voivode’s „command” was introduced into the legal system. He can now outsource activities to selected authorities and entities in his voivodeship. The paper attempts to locate this new competence in the catalog of legal forms of the voivode’s activity and an attempt to perform a systemic assessment of the compliance of this instrument with the existing models of administrative law.

Mediation in the administrative procedure is a new institution that provides a chance for an improved perception of public administration, yet it also gives rise to a range of doubts. The latter spring chiefly, though not solely, from the nature of administrative control. The principles of the rule of law, objective law, and voluntary mediation, which may be taken an improper advantage of, contrary to the legislator’s intentions, are also identified as barriers.
Analysis of the issue implies that administrative proceedings leave room for mediation. Whether it will fulfil expectations, however, largely depends on the attitudes of parties and administrative authorities, or their employees, to be precise, for whom mediation is undoubtedly both a processual and mental challenge.
The introduction of mediation to the Code of Administrative Procedure is to be applauded, mainly from the perspective of inducing citizens’ trust in public authorities. Mediation may also prove an effective instrument of eliminating conflicts in administration and thus contribute to reducing the caseload to be heard by administrative courts.
It is important, though, for this opportunity to be taken proper advantage of and for the transformation of administration from controlling to mediating and more friendly to subjects administered to continue. This is a trend that deserves to be followed not only in Polish but also other legislations.

The purpose of the article is to characterise the main reasons and consequences of the division of sub-central government tasks between its own tasks and commissioned tasks and the indication of some controversy related to this issue. The author analyses in particular certain types of local government tasks (concerning the most important spheres of local activity, such as welfare, education, or health) and its qualification to the category of „its own tasks”. The essential conclusion of the paper is that in many cases the qualification of specific public affairs to one or the other category of self-government tasks is determined not so much by its specific „nature”, but primarily by its fiscal consequences, including the ability to pass the obligation of its financing to local authorities. The research methodology used in the article is based on a critical analysis of the legal acts as well as literature on public finance and financial and administrative law.

The article is focused on critical infrastructure protection in the field of selected liability issues. Critical infrastructure is significant from the country’s integrity and continuity point of view at all levels: economic, social and political. The process of sectoral markets liberalisation and the spread of international connections of these markets (e.g. arising of transeuropean networks) have resulted in shared responsibility on critical infrastructure protection. Protection duties have been divided between private (infrastructure operators) and public authorities. It is seemingly clear which one: the former or the latter bears responsibility for the protection of critical infrastructure during and after its disruption. In fact clarificatio of this area poses a problem at the level of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. The critical infrastructure protection becomes a jigsaw puzzle of imperium and dominium relations that results in sophisticated picture of responsibility.

These standards were introduced at four international organizations and supranational associations: 1) the European Union; 2) the Council of Europe; 3) the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; 4) the Commonwealth of Independent States. The article states that the key reason for the introduction of standards for the regulation of lobbying at the international level was considerable corruption in the adoption of legal acts. It is concluded that latent and unregulated lobbying can seriously undermine public confidence in the institution of government, especially in the countries of the so-called “new democracy”. International regulation of lobbying takes the form of resolutions, procedural rules, guidelines, recommendations and model legislation. Notably, the first steps towards international regulation of lobbying were taken by the institutions of the European Union. Today EU standards for the regulation of lobbying is based on a series of articles set out in the EU-founding treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. EU standards for the regulation of lobbying influence not only the EU Member States, but it also extends to EU Partner Countries. Significant steps in the implementation of international standards for the regulation of lobbying are being constantly carried out by the Council of Europe. The establishment of CE standards for the regulation of lobbying is reflected in the activity of statutory bodies of the Council of Europe and its semi-autonomous bodies. In recent years a lot of work on the strengthening of international standards for lobbying regulation has been done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. To help address the concerns with transparency and integrity in lobbying, the OECD Member Countries adopted in 2010 a Recommendation on Principles for Transparency and Integrity in Lobbying as guidance to decision-makers on how to promote good governance in lobbying. Another international organization, which began to regulate actively the practice of lobbying is the Commonwealth of Independent States. In order to intensify the work concerning legislative regulation of lobbying in the member countries of the CIS, at the XXII Plenary Session of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS member states the Resolution No. 22-16 of November 15, 2003 was adopted, which approved a model law “On regulation of lobbying activity in state authorities”.

The article deals with legal education in the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815), which was a transitory period between a feudal and modern state. The urgent need for institutional education of a state personnel resulted from existence of legal provisions stemming from several legal orders, divergence in qualifications of personnel in administration and judiciary, as well as a necessity for efficient implementation f Napoleonic law. Those circumstances were precisely diagnosed by the minister of justice. He initiated courses of law followed by the School of Law and School of Administration. As the Duchy’s territory was enlarged, legal teaching had place also at the university in Cracow. It seems that although the state existed for only a short period, a more or less cohesive governmental concept of legal education’s role existed. It was to serve mainly the development of the state and this utilitarian goal dominated. It is worth reminding that those first Polish endeavours in the field of modern legal education took place at the time of a public finance crisis. Although majority of income was devoted to military needs and many projects were put off until later, authorities noticed that for an efficient governing of a state a well-educated personnel is needed. At that time this belief was not common.

The article deals with the issue concerning the place of the of sustainbale development
in the Polish Constitution. It will present the problem of sustainable development legal nature and its consequences. Obligations of public authorities regarding the implementation of sustainable development included in Article 5 of the Constitution, will also be considered with the background of the provisions contained in art. 74 section 1, 68 and 86 of the Constitution. The article will also contain references to contemporary understanding of sustainable development, which results from the acts of international law, including the Rio+20 Declaration and Agenda 2030. The aim of the above analysis is to indicate what shape it should be given today and how currently sustainable development should be understood. That should be the same an indication for public authorities what actions should be taken in order to respond the current understanding of sustainable development.

After six years of Polish local government authorities practising participatory budgeting only within the framework of locally regulated consultation procedures, the year 2018 marked the official establishment of the statutory basis of the instrument in question. The adoption of statutory regulations for participatory budgeting has, on the one hand, legitimised the current practices of local government authorities to some extent, but on the other hand, making participatory budgets an obligatory instrument in towns and cities with poviat rights has warped the idea of participation. The article offers an assessment of the application of the new statutory basis of participatory budgeting in the light of the provisions regulating the planning and spending of public expenditure, accompanied by remarks on the origin of adoption of this instrument in other countries. The main aim of the article is to make the said assessment while maintaining a balance between the arguments for and against the utility of participatory budgeting from the perspective of Polish local government authorities. The discussion featured in the article
comes with a question raised thus far quite rarely in the relevant literature: what
is the legal nature of public expenditure spent within the framework of a participatory
budget?

The quality of education in higher education concerns both the process of education and higher education as a good produced as a result of education processes. In the last several dozen years, the quality of education has become a major issue dealt with as part of public policy in the area of higher education both in the dimension of particular countries participating in the Bologna Process, and in the European Higher Education Area. As a result, social sciences have shown more interest in education processes in higher education, with managing the quality of education becoming one of the ideas central to the matter. Studies into the quality of education are conducted nowadays by representatives of many social sciences, adopting many different research approaches. The research approach proposed in this article refers to the organisational game concept and draws on the assumptions and the notional apparatus of the so-called decision-making approach as regards making public decisions. A particular assumption that has been made is that the activity of entities involved in the process of education and performing different roles therein (public authorities, higher education institutions and their associations, accreditation agencies and other institutions assessing the quality of higher education, the so-called stakeholders of higher education institutions) can be described and explained as decisions of players playing multiplayer and multilevel games for the organisation of education processes and for higher education. Games for education processes and for higher education are currently played not only in the hierarchical structure of the state, but also in a broader organisational perspective, which is the European Higher Education Area. Managing the quality of education in this area is not controlled top-down, and involves mainly arranging some binding and guiding institutional solutions which are to lead to an increased competitiveness of education processes and higher education offered by European higher education institutions.