In compensation cases, the decisive issue is often not “whether”, but “when”. A few dates written into a statute can determine who qualifies for redress for harm and who falls outside the protection framework. This article addresses exactly such a dispute: whether the legislature may condition compensation and non-pecuniary damages for repressive conscription into active military service during martial law on a strictly defined time window. The challenged provision covers only the period from 1 November 1982 to 28 February 1983. The claimant argues that this limitation unjustifiably narrows the right to compensation. The Sejm takes the opposite view and asks for confirmation that the provision is compatible with the Constitution.
The article presents and justifies the Sejm’s position in a constitutional complaint (SK 82/22) challenging the legality of a statutory time window that limits compensation and redress for people conscripted into active military service as a form of repression during martial law. The contested provision ties eligibility to the period from 1 November 1982 to 28 February 1983. The Sejm argues that this time criterion is constitutionally acceptable, because it directly reflects a specific repression practice: the public authorities’ shift from internment towards conscription into active military service during martial law. In this reading, the time criterion remains symbolically linked to, and develops, other statutory guarantees that provide compensation for internment and martial law rulings.
Why this specific period matters
The article explains that the time window was not chosen at random. According to the Sejm, and supported by the legislative record, the period directly corresponds to a documented practice during martial law: moving away from internment in favour of conscription into active military service, including the use of special military camps. The point is practical: the provision is designed to capture a distinct, historically identified repression mechanism that emerged in that phase of martial law governance, rather than to create an open-ended entitlement for every politically motivated conscription across the broader communist period.
What the provision compensates
A key clarification is the legal nature of the entitlement created by the challenged provision. The Sejm’s position emphasises that the rule does not require the claimant to prove the illegality of the call-up itself. The trigger is the fact of being conscripted into active service under statutory conditions, not a formal finding that the call-up was unlawful. This matters for constitutional framing, because the provision is presented as a specific statutory compensation scheme, not a direct implementation of constitutional liability for unlawful action by public authorities in every case.
Equality review: who is “similar” to whom
The heart of the constitutional complaint is an equality argument: people conscripted for political reasons outside the statutory period should be treated like those within it. The article sets out the Sejm’s counterapproach to the equality test. It argues that the relevant comparison group should be persons conscripted into active military service for independence-related activities across different periods, not broader categories defined in other statutes. Within that comparison, the differentiating criterion is time, which is not a prohibited personal characteristic, and therefore can be assessed under relevance, proportionality, and axiological justification.
Legislative design under budget and legal certainty constraints
The article highlights two practical policy considerations that support using a time criterion. The first is the need to balance compensation objectives with the state budget, a factor the Sejm treats as a legitimate public-interest consideration in shaping a statutory, exceptional compensation scheme. The second is legal certainty. A defined time window reduces discretionary, case-by-case expansion of eligibility through judicial interpretation and helps keep the scope of the entitlement predictable. In the Sejm’s view, without a time criterion the eligible group would effectively be shaped ad hoc in court practice rather than set at the statutory level.
The bottom line
The article supports the conclusion that the contested time criterion is constitutionally compatible with equal protection of property rights. The core logic is that this is an exceptional, legislatively designed compensation entitlement with a historically grounded scope, and that the time window is materially connected to a specific martial law repression practice and to the existing statutory architecture for compensating internment and martial law rulings.
Based on:
Zeszyty Prawnicze Biura Analiz Sejmowych, nr 1(85) 2025 | dr Michał Ziółkowski | Kryterium czasu w przypadku prawa do odszkodowania za powołania do czynnej służby wojskowej w okresie stanu wojennego | DOI: 10.31268/ZPBAS.2025.28
https://zpbas.sejm.gov.pl/Journal.nsf/pubBAS.xsp?documentId=450C6B27A81BF567C1258D5600493813&lang=PL
