Poland's constitutional crisis spills onto the street outside the Tribunal

Poland's constitutional crisis has spilled onto the pavement outside the Constitutional Tribunal's headquarters, where rival camps faced each other in a standoff over the court's legitimacy. President Karol Nawrocki has refused to accept the oaths of several judges elected by parliament — the sharpest turn yet in a dispute that began with five judicial appointments more than a decade ago.

The sequence started in June 2015, when the outgoing PO-PSL coalition changed the law to let parliament elect five Constitutional Tribunal judges before that October's election. The Sejm filled the seats on 8 October; President Andrzej Duda refused to accept the oaths. After PiS won the election, the new Sejm declared the appointments invalid and elected five alternative candidates on 2 December, whose oaths Duda accepted. A day later, the Tribunal ruled that three of the outgoing parliament's appointments had been constitutional and two not — a court ruling on which judges lawfully sit on the court. Three of the disputed appointees, Mariusz Muszyński, Henryk Cioch and Lech Morawski, became known as the Tribunal's "stand-in judges."

PiS then changed the rules governing the institution: how cases are heard, how many judges are required, the voting thresholds. In March 2016 the Tribunal ruled the first batch of changes unconstitutional. Prime Minister Beata Szydło's government refused to publish the judgment, arguing it had been issued under the wrong procedures. Julia Przyłębska became Tribunal president in December 2016, and the stand-in judges were allowed to take part in its work. By 2022 several judges were questioning whether her six-year term as president had expired; Przyłębska maintained she could remain until the end of her nine-year judicial term.

In 2021 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Tribunal's composition, including Mariusz Muszyński, did not meet the requirement of a "tribunal established by law." The same year, the Tribunal issued rulings challenging the primacy of certain EU law provisions concerning the judiciary.

After the October 2023 election, Donald Tusk's coalition made restoring the rule of law a central priority. In March 2024 the Sejm adopted a resolution questioning the status of the three stand-in judges and Przyłębska's authority to lead the institution, and two reform bills followed in September 2024, proposing changes to how judges are appointed and how the Tribunal functions. President Duda referred both bills to the Constitutional Tribunal for review, which stopped them from proceeding.

The bills were referred to the body they were written to change, and proceeded no further. The standoff outside the headquarters is over which bench — the one the sitting parliament elected, or the one already seated — counts as the Constitutional Tribunal.