ABSTRACT
The purpose of this contribution is to discuss the role of the Polish judiciary in the context of applying the Polish Constitution, statutes and Community law. In a concrete case an ordinary court must be ready to solve potential conflicts between legal norms originating from different legal sources. This problem will be examined from the traditional point of view that an ordinary judge should always be subordinate to statute. This principle is entrenched in the Constitution of 1997, which states that judges, within the exercise of their office, shall be independent and subject only to the Constitution and to statutes (Article 178(1)). 1 Taking the above-mentioned doctrine into account, a number of constitutional lawyers (the author included) have expressed the conviction that control over the constitutionality of statutes should, in principle, be reserved exclusively for the Constitutional Tribunal. As we will see, however, this doctrine is not universally accepted in Poland.
