Comparative analysis of quantitative indicators of Polish Constitutions
Authors: Patlachuk Vasyl 
Published: June 2021

The process of development of Polish constitutionalism is considered in the work. The first legal act, which had the features of the Constitution were the Articles of King Henry of Valois. The reason for preparing this document was the need to conclude an agreement between the heir to the French throne and the Polish nobility, who wanted to preserve their rights and freedoms. The content of this document was influenced by the Great Charter of Freedoms «Magna Garta» of 1215, which reflected the mechanism of limiting state power through the establishment of material and procedural requirements for its implementation. In order to conduct a comparative analysis of the Constitutions adopted in Poland, the method of quantitative indicators proposed by O. L. Kopylenko and B. V. Kindyuk was used, which calculated the number of signs in different articles, chapters, sections, parts of regulations. According to this methodology, the Articles focused on the work of the Seimas – 17%, military issues – 6.7%, the judiciary – 5.6%.

In jurisprudence, it is common to distinguish four main stages of the formation of constitutionalism: I generation – the end of the XVIII century. — the beginning of the XIX century; II generation — the period after the First World War; III generation — the stage after the end of the Second World War; Generation IV – the time after the collapse of the USSR. Based on this classification, the Polish Constitutions belong to the first generation: the Constitution of May 3, 1791; Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw of 1807; Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815.

The Constitutions of the first generation include: the Constitution of May 3, 1791; Constitution of 1807; Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815.

The constitutions of the second generation were adopted in the period after the end of the First World War, they reflected the processes of democratization of social and democratic life of countries and enshrined a significant amount of socio-economic human rights. Based on this classification, this group includes: the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic of 1919; Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1921; Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1935.

The constitutions of the third generation were adopted in the period after the end of the Second World War, and their content reflected the doctrine of the liberal model. Formally, this group included the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic of 1952, but it was adopted during the Soviet occupation and introduced the Stalinist model of constitutional relations in the country.

Generations of the IV generation were adopted after the collapse of the Soviet empire and reflected a new stage of state formation. In Poland, such a constitutional act was the 1997 Constitution of the Republic of Poland, which was to ensure the transition from a socialist model to a market democratic state governed by the rule of law, the stabilization of national statehood and the proclamation of accession to the European Union. The next stage of the study is a comparative analysis of the quantitative indicators of the Polish Constitutions, which showed that the total number of signs during this historical period varied from the minimum in the Articles of Heinrich Valois — 14 640 zn. to the maximum — 89 524 zn. in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland in 1997. An important indicator of the structure of constitutional acts is the number of articles (articles), which varied in a fairly wide range from 12 in the Constitution of 1791 to 243 in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland in 1997.

Key words: Polish constitutionalism, quantitative indicators, comparative analysis, Articles by Heinrich Valois, total number of characters.