On the Polish System of Judicial Control of Administration

Judicial review of administrative activity, restored in Poland in 1980 (after 40 years of non-existence) enlarged its cognition through the years, especially in the period of transformation (starting in 1989). As a result of the fundamental reform in 2002 the system of the 16 province (voivodship) administrative courts and Supreme Administrative Court (the SAC) has been established. The courts control first of all the administrative decisions taken in individual matters, but some part of their activity is devoted, among others, to the control of general administrative acts (resolutions of self-government) as well as to the lack of action or its protraction. The judicial control, being preceded by the substantial control within administrative structure, is based exclusively on the review of legality of decision (its accordance with competence, procedural and substantial rules of administrative law). The province courts neither find the facts of the matters (controls only the way the facts of the case are found by administration) nor take a decisions on behalf of the administrative organs. Court may accept the decision as conformable to the law or reverse it (without changing it), sending the case back to the administrative organ with the instructions dealing with legality of decision. The judgments of the province court might be then controlled by the SAC as an effect of cassation complaint, bringing two main solutions: confirmation of this judgment or setting it aside. The limited scope of review of administrative activity is a subject of actual debate in Poland, leading, besides important problem of shortening the time in that judgment is taken, to the enlargement of the scope of control (in fact finding or interpretation of the general clauses) and to the obtaining by the court some instruments of intervention in the substance of the administrative decisions