Supreme Court chamber confirms expiry of convicted MP’s mandate, contradicting other chamber

A chamber of Poland’s Supreme Court has rejected an MP’s appeal against the expiration of his parliamentary mandate due to him receiving a criminal conviction. The decision comes after another chamber of the same court made the opposite ruling last week on the same case.

The development highlights – and adds to – the chaos and confusion surrounding Poland’s court system after a new government last month took power following eight years of rule by the Law and Justice (PiS) party. PiS undertook a radical overhaul of the judiciary, many parts of which have been found to be unlawful.

Today’s ruling also creates further complexities in the case of the MP in question, Mariusz Kamiński, a former PiS government minister, who was yesterday jailed but who insists that his conviction and the consequent expiration of his parliamentary mandate are invalid because he received a presidential pardon.

On Wednesday morning, the labour chamber of the Supreme Court announced that it had rejected Kamiński’s appeal against the decision by the speaker of parliament, Szymon Hołownia, to confirm the expiration of Kamiński’s parliamentary mandate.

One of the judges, Bohdan Bieniek, noted that it is not the Supreme Court’s role to verify whether or not the final conviction issued against Kamiński is correct or not. “The expiration of an MP’s mandate takes place by operation of law, which the speaker confirms only by way of a declaratory decision,” said Bieniek.

In today’s ruling, the labour chamber also declared that the Supreme Court’s extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber – which last week ruled in favour of Kamiński in the same case – “does not have the status of an independent and impartial court previously established under the law”.

The extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber’s “statements are not acts applying the law”, wrote Bieniek in the justification for today’s ruling, cited by broadcaster TVN 24.

The conflict between the two chambers stems from the overhaul of the judiciary undertaken by the former PiS government, and in particular its reforms to the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), the body responsible for nominating judges.

A number of Polish and European court rulings have found that those reforms, which increased politicians’ influence over the KRS, rendered the body illegitimate. That has in turn cast doubt on the status of judges subsequently appointed by it.

The extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber, a body also created by PiS, is staffed entirely by such “new” judges appointed by the reformed KRS.

Both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have as a result found the chamber to not be a lawfully established body.

When Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik – his PiS colleague and former deputy minister who was also convicted in the same case – appealed against Hołownia’s decision to confirm the expiration of their mandates, the speaker directed those appeals to the Supreme Court’s labour chamber.

However, under PiS’s judicial reforms, it is the extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber that should assess such cases. As such, the three “new” judges in the labour chamber assigned to Wąsik’s case transferred it to the extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber.

On Thursday last week, that latter chamber accepted Wąsik’s appeal. By contrast, Kamiński’s case was assigned to three “old” judges (appointed before PiS’s overhaul of the KRS) in the labour chamber. It was they who issued today’s ruling.

However, Kamiński’s legal team argued that his appeal should be considered by the extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber. The Supreme Court’s chief justice, Małgorzata Manowska – also a “new” judge – agreed.

As a result, that chamber last Friday also ruled on Kamiński’s case, accepting his appeal against Hołownia’s decision to confirm the expiration of Kamiński’s parliamentary mandate.

The situation highlights what many experts have warned about, which is that the fact that many of PiS’s judicial reforms have been found to be unlawful by Polish and European judges has resulted in a dual legal system.

That often means that certain judges and certain rulings are not being recognised as legitimate by one side or the other. In some cases, such as Kamiński’s, it can produce completely contradictory rulings on the same issue.

A similar situation has arisen regarding Duda’s decision to pardon Kamiński and Wąsik. Last June, one Supreme Court chamber ruled that it was invalid. But, the very same month, another top court, the Constitutional Tribunal, ruled that the Supreme Court did not have the right to question a presidential pardon.

Meanwhile, last week’s rulings by the Supreme Court’s extraordinary oversight and public affairs chamber in support of Kamiński and Wąsik’s appeals effectively recognised Duda’s pardons as valid, contradicting last June’s ruling by another Supreme Court chamber.

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Main image credit: MSWiA (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.