Tabel of contents

ANIMAL RIGHTS
Paweł Chmielnicki
The rights of animals acting as patients ……………………………… 7
Sara Obrzud
Administrative and Legal Aspects of the Temporary Seizure of an Animal ……………………….. 24

PUBLIC LAW INSTITUTIONS
Justyna Holocher
Public law – private law. The validity and usefulness of the division
in view of the dispute over public media …………………………………………………………………….. 37

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
Karolina Świeca
Constitutional Limits on the Exercise of Control by the Court of Competition
and Consumer Protection in the Field of Collective Consumer Interests ………………………… 51

PROCEDURAL LAW
Przemysław Wrzeszcz
The draft amendment to Article 79 of the Executive Penal Code as an example
of legislative chaos …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 59

BUSINESS ACTIVITY LAW
Aleksander Lipiński
Some problems of the mining license agreement (interaction) between
the licensing authority and the head of the local community ………………………………………… 67
Renata Mikulska
The legal nature of the transformation of the right of perpetual
usufruct of developed land for residential purposes ……………………………………………………… 81

ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM
Paulina Bieś-Srokosz
Public tasks – community good or private interest? A few remarks on public tasks
and their legal forms currently created by the legislator ………………………………………………… 90
Olga Hałub-Kowalczyk, Katarzyna Sobańska-Laskowska
Provision of water supply to residents as an autonomous task of the municipality –
observations in light of the activities of the Ombudsman ……………………………………………… 97

Abstracts

Paweł Chmielnicki

The rights of animals acting as patients

The article reconstructs the norms regulating the rights of animals as patients and their caregivers in Poland. The discussion is based on statutory and executive acts, as well as corporate law. Conclusions regarding Poland are drawn, in part, from a comparative legal perspective. The narrow and superficial nature of regulations concerning the subject matter is demonstrated. Current Polish legislation addresses animal health primarily from the perspective of human health safety and securing the economic interests of entities that make a living from animal exploitation. The article challenges the objective approach to animal rights protection, presented even by authors who address the rights of the weaker parties in socio-economic relations. The article highlights the lack of a catalog of principles of professional ethics for veterinarians, which devotes more attention to regulating professional and economic competition between veterinarians than to their obligations to patients and their caregivers.

Sara Obrzud

Administrative and Legal Aspects of the Temporary Seizure of an Animal

The article provides an analysis of the legal institution regulated in Article 7 of the Animal Protection Act, which establishes the possibility of temporarily seizing an animal from its owner or caretaker. The study distinguishes between two modes of applying this measure: the standard mode, defined in Article 7(1), and the emergency (intervention) mode, stemming from Article 7(3). These modes differ both in terms of the entities authorized to initiate the procedure and the factual conditions justifying its application.

Particular emphasis is placed on the role of local government units-specifically the village mayor, town mayor or city president-as authorities responsible for issuing decisions regarding the animal’s place of stay during the period of temporary seizure, as well as for covering the costs of its maintenance. The analysis also considers the importance of law enforcement agencies, municipal guards, and social organizations in initiating and implementing this protective measure.

The study concludes that the temporary seizure of an animal constitutes an administrative-law instrument aimed at protecting the welfare of the animal and is carried out through the cooperation of public administration authorities, law enforcement services, and civil society entities.

Justyna Holocher

Public law – private law. The validity and usefulness of the division in view of the dispute over public media

The dispute surrounding public media was one of the most significant conflicts in recent years. It was politically entangled, yet legally complex and ambiguous. At its core, the issue revolved around the possibility of using private law mechanisms to resolve matters of public law, particularly in connection with the restructuring of media companies carried out by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage through the application of provisions from the Commercial Companies Code.

This doctrinal dispute prompted broader reflection on the nature, character, and criteria for distinguishing between public and private law, as well as its relevance in the realm of lawmaking and legal application. It highlighted the presence and usefulness of this distinction in legal thinking and reasoning, its role in organizing legal discourse, and its function in filling gaps in legal argumentation. At the same time, it drew attention to the challenges – especially those related to classifying specific legal norms as either public or private, and to delineating the boundaries between these two branches of law.

Despite these limitations, the distinction can still be treated as an example of how established concepts and categories can be used to reflect on the current state of the law – defining the legal order and the relationships inherent to it.

Karolina Świeca

Constitutional Limits on the Exercise of Control by the Court of Competition and Consumer Protection in the Field of Collective Consumer Interests

The scope of this topic is defined by the control exercised by a common court, namely the Court of Competition and Consumer Protection, in the area of protection of collective consumer interests regulated by the Act of 16 February 2007 on competition and consumer protection. In particular, the author will focus on analysing the constitutionality of its jurisdiction in the implementation of public law consumer protection.

Przemysław Wrzeszcz

The draft amendment to Article 79 of the Executive Penal Code as an example of legislative chaos

Legislative work is currently underway on another amendment to the Polish Penal Enforcement Code. This article focuses on the proposed amendment to Article 79, which seeks to reintroduce – at least for short-term custodial sentences – the principle of summoning convicted persons to voluntarily surrender at a detention centre to serve their sentence. What might seem like a simple, “technical” change in fact gives rise to numerous legislative concerns and practical doubts. The draft fails to account for persons who, under separate legal provisions, are subject to compulsory apprehension and delivery to detention facilities. It also misapplies the term “convicted” to individuals subjected to court-imposed punitive measures (e.g. contempt sanctions) or debtors affected by coercive enforcement in civil proceedings. Furthermore, it introduces unclear penalty thresholds (e.g. the discrepancy between two years of military detention and 1 year and 6 months of imprisonment) and relies on vague legal terminology. The article argues that, rather than streamlining the enforcement of custodial sanctions, the draft provisions risk disrupting the coherence of the system. The author uses this legislative proposal as a case study to critically assess the current state of government lawmaking. The amendment to Article 79 exemplifies a broader issue: legislative negligence in areas overlooked by both public debate and academic scrutiny.

Aleksander Lipiński

Some problems of the mining license agreement (interaction) between the licensing authority and the head of the local community

A license for mining of minerals is not an independent decision of the licensing authority. With the exception of those concerning the maritime areas of the Republic of Poland, obtaining such a license requires consent of the head of the municipality. The form of such consent is an order granted at the request of the licensing authority, and may be challenged by the party to the authority of the higher level and to the administrative court. Its prerequisite is a determination that the intended activity will not violate the use of the landproperty as specified in the local spatial development plan.

Renata Mikulska

The legal nature of the transformation of the right of perpetual usufruct of developed land for residential purposes

Over the years, as a result of amendments introduced to both the Civil Code and the Act of 21 August 1997 on Real Estate Management, perpetual usufruct has become a universal legal form of real estate use, increasingly similar in substance to ownership rights. By granting it a civil-law character, a gradual trend has been observed towards its elimination from legal transactions through the introduction of successive acts transforming perpetual usufruct rights into ownership rights. The individual stages of this transformation primarily involve residential properties. This article will analyze the legal nature of this transformation.

Olga Hałub-Kowalczyk, Katarzyna Sobańska-Laskowska

Provision of water supply to residents as an autonomous task of the municipality – observations in light of the activities of the Ombudsman

Water availability is currently becoming one one the major challanges that we need to face with in the light of ongoing climate crisis. Despite the fact that Polish Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to water expressis verbis, in the legislation there’s been broad cathalogue of duties of local authorities to provide access to this good for inhabitants of the municipality. The analysis of the jurisprudence leads to the conclusion, that the most urgent issues related to this problem are: the entitlements for residents stemming from these duties as well as the scope of the obligation to provide collective water supply for residents. The Polish Ombudsman’s actions on issues related to water availability confirm this regularity. So far, he has intervened i.a. in the case of farmstead residents who did not have a water supply system brought to their homes. These initiatives have provided the impetus for the present research, the purpose of which is to analyze the content of a municipality’s obligation to supply residents with this good from the perspective of constitutional standards.

Paulina Bieś-Srokosz

Public tasks – community good or private interest? A few remarks on public tasks and their legal forms currently created by the legislator

Public tasks constitute an important part of public administration because they are carried out in order to meet the needs of society by the state. The legislator’s response to the current needs of society often requires adapting appropriate legal forms to them, and thus selecting an entity that will undertake to meet them. Currently, there is a tendency to create forms that have features typical of private law. This leads to reflection on the issue of protecting the common good or perhaps the private good? This article is an introduction to deeper and further considerations on issues related to: public tasks, their forms and the public interest related to them, the analysis of which is not always as obvious as it seems at „first glance”.