Polish Constitution of 1935
Encyclopedia
The April Constitution of Poland ( or Konstytucja kwietniowa) was the general law
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

 passed by the act of the Polish Sejm
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....

 on 23 April 1935. It introduced in Poland a presidential system
Presidential system
A presidential system is a system of government where an executive branch exists and presides separately from the legislature, to which it is not responsible and which cannot, in normal circumstances, dismiss it....

 with certain elements of authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...

.

It was accepted in violation of the earlier March Constitution of 1921 and the Rules of the Parliament http://www.konstytucje.pl/pub/t019.htm, and as such it was questioned by most of the opposition to the rule of Sanacja
Sanacja
Sanation was a Polish political movement that came to power after Józef Piłsudski's May 1926 Coup d'État. Sanation took its name from his watchword—the moral "sanation" of the Polish body politic...

.

It is commonly believed that the drafting of the constitution was heavily influenced by Józef Piłsudski, who died two and a half weeks after the constitution was passed.

The act introduced the idea that the state is a common good
Common good
The common good is a term that can refer to several different concepts. In the popular meaning, the common good describes a specific "good" that is shared and beneficial for all members of a given community...

 of all the citizens. It also limited the powers of the Sejm and Senat
Senate of Poland
The Senate is the upper house of the Polish parliament, the lower house being the 'Sejm'. The history of the Polish Senate is rich in tradition and stretches back over 500 years, it was one of the first constituent bodies of a bicameral parliament in Europe and existed without hiatus until the...

 while strengthening the authority of the President of Poland. The President was responsible for choosing the members of the government, which in turn was responsible to the parliament. He also had a right to dismiss the parliament before the end of term, to name one third of the Senators, the commander-in-chief
Commander-in-Chief
A commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military...

 of the Polish Army and the General Inspector of the Armed Forces.Seidner, Stanley S. Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz Rydz and the Defense of Poland, New York, 1978.

He also had a right to issue decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...

s and veto
Veto
A veto, Latin for "I forbid", is the power of an officer of the state to unilaterally stop an official action, especially enactment of a piece of legislation...

 the acts passed by the Sejm non-constructively.

Among the most notable features of the new constitution was the president's right to name his successor in case of war. This was used as the legal base for the existence of the Polish Government in Exile
Polish government in Exile
The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...

 during and after the World War II. The constitution was officially abolished in 1944 by the Soviet-backed
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 communist authorities of Poland, who officially returned to the March Constitution, while introducing many laws based on the Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 system. The Government in Exile operated under the April Constitution until December 1990, when it conferred succession upon Lech Walesa following the latter's election to the Polish presidency.

External links

Full text of April Constitution
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