“Nihil novi”? On the antecedents of the judicial protection of the administrative autonomy of a public university in Poland

Abstract

Administrative autonomy, which is the most advanced type of decentralising public administration, plays a key role in robustly safeguarding academic freedom. In the over a century-long history of the practice of the Polish regulations pertaining to the organisation and functioning of public universities, no principle of the judicial protection of the higher education institutions’ independence has been formulated — not even under the regulations of article 70 (5) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. This legislative negligence poses serious threats in the current legal situation, which only worsens in the environment that facilitates the authoritarian activities of public authorities in Poland.