Polish Supreme Court picks candidates for new chief justice despite boycott by some judges

Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work!

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s Supreme Court has nominated five candidates to become its new chief justice, replacing the outgoing Małgorzata Manowska, whose six-year term will come to an end in May. President Karol Nawrocki will now decide which of the candidates will become the new head of the court.

However, the process has been shrouded in controversy, as it was six years ago, due to the ongoing rule-of-law crisis in Poland. Many of the court’s judges have boycotted the election for a new chief justice as they do not recognise the legitimacy of their colleagues.

The process of choosing a new chief justice begins with the Supreme Court’s judges (of whom there are currently 91) voting to select a shortlist of candidates from among their own members.

The five candidates who receive the most votes are then presented to the president, who must select one of them, at his own discretion, to become the new head of the court.

Manowska, who decided not to stand for a second term, originally called a meeting on Tuesday this week to select candidates to replace her. For that to take place, a quorum of 84 judges needed to be present. However, only 48 attended, meaning the meeting was cancelled.

The reason for the low attendance was that a large minority of judges on the Supreme Court have boycotted the process of choosing a new chief justice because they regard the majority of their colleagues, including Manowska, as holding their positions illegitimately.

The dispute stems from a decision by the former Law and Justice (PiS) government to overhaul the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), the body responsible for nominating judges, in 2017.

Previously, the KRS’s members had been chosen mostly by judges themselves; after PiS’s reforms, most were chosen by politicians. That rendered the KRS illegitimate, according to multiple Polish and European court rulings, as well as many expert bodies and Polish judges themselves.

As a consequence, many “old” judges appointed before the KRS reform regard “new” judges appointed since then as illegitimate. On the Supreme Court, for example, over 60% of judges are “new” and many of their “old” colleagues refuse to cooperate with them.

A group of 29 “old” judges jointly signed a letter this week saying that they were refusing to participate in the election because Manowska herself, who launched the process, holds her position illegitimately while the participation of other “new” judges also renders the elections invalid.

“We will not participate in this theatre,” one of the rebel judges, Włodzimierz Wróbel, told broadcaster TVN. “The entire procedure is…not consistent with the law or the constitution.”

On Wednesday, Manowska attempted to hold a second meeting to choose candidates. Under the court’s regulations, this time the quorum was lowered to 75. However, that figure was again not reached, with only 51 judges showing up.

On Thursday, a third meeting was called, with the quorum this time lowered to 32. Court spokesman Igor Zgoliński confirmed that 53 judges had attended, allowing the meeting to take place. Six candidates to be the new chief justice were chosen, all of them “new” judges.

On Friday, a vote then took place to choose the five who would be presented to the president. The candidate with the highest number of votes, 18, was Zbigniew Kapiński, a judge from the Supreme Court’s criminal chamber.

The other four candidates who will be presented to Nawrocki are: Mariusz Załucki (who received 13 votes), Paweł Czubik (nine votes), Aleksander Stępkowski (five votes) and Tomasz Demendecki (five votes).

The final candidate, Agnieszka Góra-Błaszczykowska, also received five votes, forcing a run-off with Stępowski and Demendecki. But in that second round she gained the fewest votes and was therefore eliminated.

When Nawrocki makes his decision, he does not have to take into account how many votes each candidate received. He has complete discretion to choose any of the five candidates presented to him.

Nawrocki is aligned with PiS and accepts the legitimacy of the overhauled KRS and the “new” judges nominated by it. However, the current government, which replaced PiS in office in December 2023, takes the opposite view.

It has sought to restore the KRS to its previous state before PiS’s reforms. But Nawrocki earlier this month vetoed legislation to that effect.

Meanwhile, the president submitted his own proposed law that would jail officials for up to ten years if they “persistently question” his powers or those of judicial bodies filled with PiS-era appointees, such as the Supreme Court and Constitutional Tribunal (TK).

Manowska herself has regularly with the current government. In December 2023, she and the head of the TK criticised proposals to roll back PiS-era reforms. Last year, she accused the government of an “unlawful and audacious attack on the independence of the Supreme Court”.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court rejected a request by prosecutors to strip Manowska of legal immunity so that she can face charges of abusing her powers.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Penn State University Libraries/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

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.