Request to strip Polish Supreme Court head of legal immunity rejected in contested decision

Sep 19, 2025 | 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.

Poland’s rule-of-law crisis took a further twist on Thursday after opposition-aligned judges on the State Tribunal rejected prosecutors’ request to strip the chief justice of the Supreme Court of legal immunity so that she can face abuse-of-power charges.

However, members of the State Tribunal appointed by the government’s parliamentary majority, who were excluded from Thursday’s hearing, argue that the decision was unlawfully issued and therefore has no legal effect.

The episode pertains to Małgorzata Manowska, who was appointed as head of the Supreme Court under the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government. She has been a regular critic of the actions of the current government, which replaced PiS in office at the end of 2023.

In July this year, prosecutors – who are under the ultimate authority of the current administration – announced that they want to bring charges against Manowski for three alleged offences relating to abuse of power.

However, before they can do so, she must be stripped of legal immunity by the Supreme Court and the State Tribunal, a body tasked with holding state officials to account and which is also led by Manowska.

On Thursday, a panel made up of three State Tribunal judges held a behind-closed-doors hearing at which they rejected a motion by the National Prosecutor’s Office to waive Manowska’s immunity.

They did so after Manowska’s lawyers argued that 12 of the tribunal’s judges should be excluded from ruling on the case because they had been interviewed by prosecutors as witnesses in relation to the crimes Manowska was accused of.

Of the three judges who sat on Thursday’s panel, two, Piotr Andrzejewski and Piotr Sak, are former politicians associated with PiS and who were chosen by the party to be members of the State Tribunal.

The National Prosecutor’s Office had previously filed a motion to have both excluded from the case because it said there were “justified doubts as to the impartiality”, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

But the State Tribunal rejected that motion because it found that the national prosecutor, Dariusz Korneluk, holds the position illegitimately after the former PiS-era national prosecutor was controversially removed by the current government last year.

 

A two-person majority made up of Andrzejewski and Sak then decided to reject the request to waive Manowska’s immunity. Sak later told PAP that the decision had been made due to the lack of a necessary quorum and the lack of a legitimate national prosecutor.

However, members of the tribunal who were chosen by the government’s majority in parliament rejected the legitimacy of Thursday’s hearing. They note, for example, that it was Andrzejewski and Sak themselves who excluded most of the tribunal’s members, thereby causing the lack of a quorum.

It should be regarded as “a social gathering that ended with some kind of document” being issued, Jacek Dubois, the deputy head of the tribunal, told broadcaster TVN. “What happened has no legal significance, because the law doesn’t even provide for a three-member panel in an immunity waiver procedure.”

Another member of the tribunal, Przemysław Rosati, said that Thursday’s three-person hearing was “absolutely illegal”.

Meanwhile, a government minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, also condemned the situation, writing: “The State Tribunal is not and will never be the private property of PiS. The unlawful protection of Ms Manowska’s immunity casts the worst possible party testimonial on the people involved in it.”

News website Business Insider Polska reports that tribunal members aligned with the government may now file a complaint about the hearing, though that would likely “paralyse the tribunal”.

Another possibility would be for prosecutors to file new motions to waive Manowska’s immunity formulated in such a way as to avoid the legal arguments that were used to exclude government-aligned tribunal members from this week’s hearing.

Manowska was appointed as chief justice in 2020 by PiS-aligned president Andrzej Duda. The decision aroused controversy, as she was picked ahead of another candidate who received twice as many nominations from among other judges.

Manowska is one of the so-called “neo-judges” who were appointed to the Supreme Court after the PiS government had overhauled the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) – the body responsible for nominating judges – in a manner that Polish and European courts found rendered it illegitimate due to political influence.

Since PiS lost power in December 2023, Manowska has spoken out against the actions of the new ruling coalition, accusing it of “violating the foundations of the constitutional order of Poland” and taking “illegal actions” against PiS MPs.

Separately, another of Poland’s top courts, the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), has also been embroiled in a conflict with the government, which refuses to recognise its legitimacy due to the presence of judges illegitimately appointed under PiS.


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: Darwinek/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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