President appoints new chief justice of Polish Supreme Court

May 26, 2026 | Featured, Law, Politics

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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.

President Karol Nawrocki has appointed a new chief justice of Poland’s Supreme Court. However, his choice of Zbigniew Kapiński has drawn criticism from both the government, with which Nawrocki regularly clashes, and the opposition, with whom he is aligned.

Just before the decision was announced, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, which supported Nawrocki’s election as president last year, strongly criticised Kapiński for his role in a case involving former President Lech Wałęsa.

Meanwhile, a deputy justice minister labelled Kapiński “a symbol of the politicisation of the Supreme Court” and pointed to the fact that he is one of the so-called “neo-judges” appointed through a body overhauled by the former PiS government in a manner that rendered it – and therefore the judges it nominates – illegitimate.

Since 2020, the Supreme Court has been led by another “neo-judge”, Małgorzata Manowska, who has regularly clashed with the current government. Her six-year term came to an end today.

In February, the Supreme Court’s judges, in accordance with procedures put in place when PiS was in power, voted to choose five potential candidates to replace her.

However, almost a third of the court’s judges boycotted the vote. They are so-called “old judges” appointed to the court before the PiS government overhauled the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) in 2017.

 

The KRS is the body responsible for nominating judges to courts in Poland. Previously, most of its members were chosen by judges themselves, but PiS passed that power to politicians, framing it as a move to increase democratic legitimacy.

However, according to multiple Polish and European court rulings, PiS’s reforms rendered the KRS illegitimate by putting it under political influence.

As a result, many of the “old judges” on the Supreme Court refuse to serve alongside their “new” colleagues. The current government, which replaced PiS in 2023, also does not recognise their legitimacy. And there are doubts over the legality of rulings issued by them.

In the end, the Supreme Court judges who did take part in the vote to choose Manowska’s successor picked five candidates who are all themselves “neo-judges”.

Kapiński, the current head of the court’s criminal chamber, received the highest number of votes from his colleagues. However, the president has complete discretion to choose any of the five. In 2020, for example, Duda chose Manowska as chief justice despite her not receiving the most votes.

Announcing Kapiński’s selection as chief justice, presidential spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz praised him not only as “an extremely experienced judge”, but also for being “the first to oppose the current government’s violation of the rule of law”.

He pointed to the fact that, in 2024, the Supreme Court’s criminal chamber, headed by Kapiński, had issued a resolution declaring that the government’s decision to remove the PiS-era national prosecutor and replace him with its own candidate was unlawful.

After Kapiński was confirmed as chief justice on Monday, many figures from Tusk’s ruling coalition pointed to his disputed legal status.

“Neo-judge Kapiński is a symbol of the politicisation of a significant part of the Supreme Court,” wrote deputy justice minister Dariusz Mazur. “[His] status as a neo-judge means that every ruling issued with his involvement may be challenged by the European Court of Human Rights.”

Kapiński himself, speaking to broadcaster wPolsce24, acknowledged “the divisions that exist between the so-called ‘old’ and ‘new’ judges”. But he said he would seek to “ensure that the Supreme Court remains completely apolitical” in its decision-making.

While Kapiński may have few fans in the current government, his selection also angered opposition leader Kaczyński.

On Saturday, before Nawrocki’s decision had been announced but with reports suggesting he would choose Kapiński, Kaczyński wrote a social media post criticising the judge’s role in the lustration process of Wałęsa, the former anti-communist leader and president, in 2000.

Lustration is the name given in Central and Eastern Europe to the legal process for scrutinising whether public officials previously collaborated with the former communist authorities.

In 2000, Warsaw’s court of appeal, with Kapiński on the bench, ruled that Wałęsa’s lustration declaration was truthful. However, that decision still angers many on the political right, who point to evidence that Wałęsa in fact collaborated with the communist security services (a claim that he denies).

“I cannot imagine that a judge who took part in…Lech Wałęsa’s pseudo-lustration process…would become the supreme justice of the Supreme Court,” wrote Kaczyński on Saturday.

After Nawrocki confirmed Kapiński as his choice, his decision was also criticised by Sławomir Cenckiewicz, who until last month served as the president’s national security adviser. Cenckiewicz is a historian whose work has focused on uncovering Wałęsa’s alleged communist collaboration.

“Karol Nawrocki, you’ve made a terrible mistake,” wrote Cenckiewicz in a social media post. “The court proceedings from 2000 and what the adjudicating panel did with the evidential material in the matter of Wałęsa’s past were a breach of the law and a violation of every principle of judicial integrity.”

He said that the court already possessed in 2000 ample evidence that Wałęsa had been a communist collaborator, as well as evidence that he had tried after 1989 to cover this up.

Leśkiewicz, the presidential spokesman, addressed the controversy when announcing Nawrocki’s choice of Kapiński as chief justice.

He said that, while today “there is no doubt that Lech Wałęsa was a secret collaborator of the communist security services”, when the lustration ruling was issued in 2000, “the court did not have all the documents we know about today”.

Earlier this month, before Kaczyński’s statement, Manowska also defended Kapiński against the “unfair and unjust” criticism he was facing. She said that the 2000 lustration ruling was made “based on the evidence available at the time”, and that only many years later did clear evidence come to light.


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: Przemysław Keler/KPRP

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