page_title: Poland
section_title: Law
hierarchical_section_title: Poland / Government and politics / Law
caption_attribution_description: Manuscript of the Constitution of the 3rd May 1791
context_page_description: Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country located in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, covering an area of 312,696 square kilometres, and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With a population of nearly 38.5 million people, Poland is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union. Poland's capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin.
  Poland is bordered by the Baltic Sea, Lithuania, and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast to the north, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west.
  The history of human activity on Polish soil spans thousands of years. Throughout the late antiquity period it became extensively diverse, with various cultures and tribes settling on the vast Central European Plain. However, it was the Western Polans who dominated the region and gave Poland its name. The establishment of Polish statehood can be traced to 966, when the pagan ruler of a realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland embraced Christianity and converted to Catholicism.
context_section_description: The Constitution of Poland is the enacted supreme law, and the Polish legal system is based on the principle of civil rights, governed by the code of civil law. The current democratic constitution was adopted by the National Assembly of Poland on 2 April 1997; it guarantees a multi-party state with freedoms of religion, speech and assembly, prohibits the practices of forced medical experimentation, torture or corporal punishment, and acknowledges the inviolability of the home, the right to form trade unions, and the right to strike.
  The judiciary incorporates a four-tier court system composed of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Administrative Court, Common Courts (District, Regional, Appellate) and the Military Court. Judges are nominated by the National Council of the Judiciary and are appointed for life by the president. The Constitutional and State Tribunals are separate judicial bodies, which rule the constitutional liability of people holding the highest offices of state and supervise the compliance of statutory law, thus protecting the Constitution.
  Historically, the most significant Polish legal act is the Constitution of 3 May 1791, one of the first of its kind in Europe. Instituted as a Government Act, it was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the federative Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and its Golden Liberty. Previously, only the Henrician Articles (1573) signed by each of Poland's elected monarchs could perform the function of a set of basic laws. The new Constitution introduced political equality between townspeople and the nobility (szlachta), and placed the peasants under the protection of the government. It abolished pernicious parliamentary policies such as the liberum veto, which permitted any deputy to rescind all the legislation passed in the interest of a foreign power. The 3 May Constitution sought to supplant the existing anarchy fostered by some of the country's reactionary magnates, with a more egalitarian and democratic constitutional monarchy. The Constitution influenced many later democratic movements across the globe.
  Prior to the last Partition in 1795, tax-paying females were allowed to take part in political life, and, since 1918, all women can vote. Poland was the 12th sovereign country to introduce universal women's suffrage. Abortion is permitted only under special circumstances, such as when a woman's life or health would be in danger by the continuation of pregnancy, when the pregnancy is the result of a criminal act, or when the fetus is seriously malformed. Poland does not criminalize homosexuality, and its legality was confirmed in 1932. The Polish Constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. 
  Poland has a low homicide rate at 0.7 murders per 100,000 people, as of 2018. Rape, assault and violent crime remain at a very low level.
caption: The Constitution of 3 May adopted in 1791 was the first modern constitution in Europe.[143]
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