Main Problems Associated with Imposing Restrictions on Individual Rights and Freedoms During a State of Epidemic and a State of Epidemic Threat

Abstract

Although three years have passed since the end of the state of epidemic in Poland, no lessons have yet been learned from the mistakes made at that time. The Act on Preventing and Combating Infections and Infectious Diseases in Humans still contains solutions consistently regarded as defective in the case-law and legal scholarship. The government continues to have the power to shape restrictions on civil rights and freedoms freely by means of regulations issued on the basis of blanket statutory delegations, with only limited effective judicial review. This article discusses the principal legal flaws in the existing arrangements and proposes ways of remedying them by limiting the range of permissible restrictions, supplementing statutory delegations with safeguards restricting the government’s excessive regulatory discretion, and strengthening judicial review of epidemic regulations.